Emergency Lawyers, a Sudanese legal group that documents wartime abuses, said on Sunday that at least 72 civilian gold miners were killed in an airstrike at Jabal al-Uqaydat, a remote site near the disputed Sudan-Egypt border. The figure is preliminary, the group warned, and survivors who spoke to AFP and Sudan Tribune said the toll could be far higher, with some claiming more than 200 dead and thousands of workers fleeing into caves and hills.
What witnesses describe
Miner Abdelaziz Youssef told AFP the jet struck five times on the morning of Saturday, 10 October, and that he ran up the mountain fearing another pass. Sharaf Ali, another survivor, said thousands of people were working the site when bombs fell; some ran toward the Al-Ansary gold market while others scattered in the opposite direction, making a full count impossible. Sudan Tribune reported that the strike collapsed shafts with miners still underground.
None of the higher survivor estimates has been independently verified. Emergency Lawyers blamed Egypt’s air force and said the target lay inside Sudan. Egypt has issued no public comment on this specific attack, and AFP said it could not confirm the allegation. Cairo’s military has previously described large-scale operations against illegal mining on its side of the frontier without detailing individual strikes.
Border, gold and a wider war
The strike lands in a stretch of desert where Sudan and Egypt have never fully agreed a line. Sudan cites a 1902 administrative boundary; Egypt points to an 1899 treaty along the 22nd parallel. Both claim the mineral-rich Halayeb triangle, and record gold prices have drawn thousands of informal miners to Jabal al-Uqaydat in recent months. Miners told Sudan Tribune they regularly see heavy machinery moving ore toward Egypt, while Egyptian border units have accused Sudanese prospectors of crossing an unmarked line.
Politically, the attack sits inside Sudan’s broader civil war. Egypt backs army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan against the Rapid Support Forces; AFP has reported more than 200,000 war-related deaths since April 2023. Gold from border sites helps finance fighters on multiple sides, and Cairo has long treated the 1,200-kilometre frontier as a security corridor, stepping up deportations and raids against smuggling. Emergency Lawyers said a similar strike in June killed 23 workers at the same location, though Egypt did not claim that operation either.
What happens next
With no official death toll from either capital, recovery work is left to miners and local responders hours from the nearest town. Rights monitors said verification teams face dangerous travel and limited communications. If Egypt confirms action in the area, diplomats in Khartoum and Cairo will face questions about civilian protection rules; if another actor carried out the raid, the mystery only deepens a conflict already marked by unattributed violence along the border. For now, Youssef and others are still counting bodies on the mountain while fearing the aircraft will return.