At least 60 killed in a gold-mine collapse in RSF-held West Kordofan

At least 60 people died when a gold mine collapsed on 14 September in a remote stretch north of al-Nuhud in Sudan's West Kordofan, three local sources told Reuters on 16 September. CGTN, citing survivors and volunteers, put the number at 63. The shafts were artisanal wells with no published safety procedures and no rescue equipment on site. That, the sources said, is why the death count is so high.

West Kordofan is held by the Rapid Support Forces. Gold from informal pits is one of the force's revenue lines. Sudan is among Africa's largest gold producers. Most of the metal leaves the country through unofficial channels rather than through the central bank's windows. The war that split the army and the RSF has made those channels more important, not less.

No government rescue column had reached the site by Wednesday in the accounts that have been published. The area is remote. The force that controls it is a party to the war. Independent journalists cannot move there freely. The figures therefore come from people on the ground who spoke to wire reporters, and from volunteers who spoke to CGTN. They should be read as a floor, not as a finished roll.

How these pits kill

Artisanal gold shafts in Sudan are often hand-dug, unlined and crowded. A collapse fills the hole with earth before anyone at the surface can run a proper lift. Without shoring, without a second exit, without pumps and without a trained crew, the only tools are hands and a rope. That is the difference between a mine accident that injures and a mine accident that becomes a mass grave.

Similar collapses have been reported in River Nile state and in other gold belts during the war. The pattern is the same: a rush of men, some of them displaced from cities, working a hole that a local boss or a unit commander treats as a cash box. When the walls go, there is no inspector and no ambulance network that answers to a civilian ministry.

The RSF's interest in gold is documented in earlier reporting on the war economy. Control of pits and of the roads out of Kordofan and Darfur pays for fuel, vehicles and wages. A collapse that kills 60 workers does not close that business. It subtracts labour for a week and then the holes open again, because the metal is still in the ground and the buyers are still outside the country.

What is missing from the official record

There is no statement yet from a Sudanese civilian authority that both sides recognise. There is no named list of the dead. There is no photograph of the shaft that can be tied to this event rather than to another pit. Reuters' sources placed the site north of al-Nuhud and dated the collapse to Sunday. That is the most specific public location.

Readers should treat later numbers with the same caution. In collapses like this the count often rises as families arrive and as bodies are brought up over days. It can also stall if the site is abandoned. Either path is possible in an RSF-held pocket of Kordofan.

Sudan's gold will keep moving. The question this week is whether any commander on that ground treats 60 dead miners as a reason to change how the pits are dug. Nothing in the first accounts suggests that they will.