Gold Mine Collapse in Sudan Kills at Least 70

Scores of people died and dozens of others were missing after shafts collapsed at an artisanal gold mine in Sudan, a charity group said on Wednesday.

It was the latest disaster connected to the lucrative but often lightly regulated business of low-tech mineral extraction in the region.

The mine in West Kordofan state collapsed on Sunday. Since then, 70 bodies have been recovered, but dozens of others remained trapped underground, said Suliman Abo Humeida, spokesman for the Emergency Response Rooms, a community-led humanitarian initiative, in the town of Al-Nuhud in West Kordofan.

“The chances of rescue are limited because there are no specialized rescue teams or specialized equipment,” Mr. Humeida said by telephone. He added that three people had been rescued, each with multiple fractures, and that most of the dead and missing were young men, though several were teenagers.

Artisanal gold mining is big business in Sudan and other countries in eastern Africa, including Kenya, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Workers use hand-held tools to dig vertical shafts 50 or more yards deep before building lateral tunnels from which earth is scooped and brought to the surface. Air is pumped down the shafts, in part to displace toxic gases, and the tunnels are braced with milled branches or lengths of wood to prevent collapse.

A series of interconnected shafts dug close to one another collapsed at the site in Al-Nuhud, according to Mr. Humeida.

The work is inherently dangerous, but with few other industries in the region, mining has become a major source of employment in the region. This is particularly true in Sudan, where a civil war that began in April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces and a paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Forces has shattered the country’s economy.

Gold is also a driver of the conflict between the Sudanese military and the Rapid Support Forces, which have run one of the country’s most lucrative gold mines for almost a decade and control the area where the collapse took occurred on Sunday.

While individual miners earn little, they help to generate huge trade, fueled by high global gold prices. Since the war began, billions of dollars’ worth of gold has been shipped by both sides in the war to many countries.

Some of the profits are used to buy the missiles, guns and, increasingly drones, that have become central to the war, according to experts.