Al-Zara gold mine collapse kills at least 82 in West Kordofan

At least 82 people are dead after adjoining shafts at the al-Zara gold mine, northwest of al-Nuhud in Sudan’s West Kordofan, gave way. A local administrator speaking to AFP on 16 September said about 50 more people were injured and that the number still trapped was unknown. Rescue work on Wednesday morning had already produced 60 bodies. Another 22 were found later in the day.

The figures still move. Reuters, citing three local sources, put the toll at least at 60. The Kordofan Observatory, a monitoring group, said more than 70 miners were dead or missing. The Sudan Doctors Network earlier counted 67 recovered bodies and warned the number would rise. AP separately quoted an administration official who also used the figure of 82. The spread is a product of a remote site, no official casualty desk, and a war that has emptied the state of civil machinery.

Accounts also differ on when the failure started. One local official told reporters that a single shaft collapsed on Sunday, 13 September, and that the collapse then ran through connected workings. The Observatory said the adjoining shafts failed on Tuesday. Amin Suleiman, a miner who survived, said the pits sat so close together that each one pulled the next down with it. The workings stretch across about a kilometre of fragile, sandy ground in the Fouja area.

No specialised rescue team has arrived. Residents and other miners are using hand tools. The Observatory said a survivor came out on Tuesday and reported that people were still alive below. Loose sand keeps collapsing as they dig. The three sources who spoke to Reuters blamed the death count on the absence of safety procedures and rescue kit. The Doctors Network said the informal mine had no basic safeguards for the people who work it.

West Kordofan is held by the Rapid Support Forces, the paramilitary force fighting the Sudanese army since April 2023. The war is in its fourth year. Gold is one of the few cash crops left in the country, and both sides treat it as a war chest. Sudan ranks among Africa’s largest gold producers. Most of that metal comes from artisanal pits of the kind at al-Zara: unlicensed shafts, no timbering worth the name, no pumps, no trained rescue crew. A large share of the output leaves the country through informal channels, including routes that end in the United Arab Emirates.

The pattern is old. Informal mines in Kordofan and Darfur have failed before, usually with little record beyond a local count. What is new this week is the size of the reported death list and the fact that it landed in a week when the International Organization for Migration has already warned that Sudan’s common aid pipeline could run dry by the end of September. Shelter kits that reached 2.84 million people since 2023 are funded this year for about 330,000. A mine disaster in an RSF-held zone sits outside that pipeline anyway. There is no route for heavy lifting gear to reach Fouja at speed.

Artisanal mining in Sudan is not a side activity. It is how households in dry states replace a collapsed farm wage. Men and boys sink shafts by hand, often after a rain that softens the sand, and sell dust to traders who sit at the pit head. The same sand that makes the work possible is what failed at al-Zara. When one shaft goes, the next goes with it because the walls between them are only a few metres of uncompacted ground.

The RSF source who spoke to AFP did not say how many people had been on the site when the first shaft failed. Informal mines of this size can hold scores of workers on a single shift, plus haulers and washers at the surface. The Observatory described the miners as unregulated. That is the legal fact. It is also why no company safety officer, no government inspector, and no mine ambulance was on the ground when the ground moved.

Search work continues. The Doctors Network said the casualty list is not closed. Families in al-Nuhud and the surrounding villages are waiting on a count that may never be complete. In a state without a functioning registrar, a missing miner is often recorded only by the people who dug beside him.

What happens next depends on whether any outside team can reach the site with shoring and air. As of Wednesday night, none had. The people still underground, if any remain alive, are being sought with the same tools that opened the shafts in the first place.