KHARTOUM, Sudan — Air strikes killed at least 72 civilians prospecting for gold at a remote mining area on Sudan’s border with Egypt on Saturday, the Khartoum-based rights group Emergency Lawyers said, accusing Egypt’s air force of carrying out the attack, BBC News and DW reported.
The group said jets targeted artisanal miners at popular gold-mining sites in Northern State, south of the disputed Halaib Triangle and east of the River Nile, in rugged territory it says lies inside Sudan. “The deliberate targeting of unarmed civilians violates international humanitarian law and the right to life,” Emergency Lawyers said in a statement on Sunday. “These acts may constitute war crimes.”
Neither the Egyptian government nor Sudan’s de facto authorities had commented, the BBC said. Egypt has previously acknowledged a “large-scale operation” against illegal gold mining within its borders, according to DW. Independent verification is difficult because of the site’s remoteness.
The toll is provisional. The Sudan Doctors Network warned it would likely rise because of the severity of some injuries and poor access to medical care, and the Paris-based Sudan Tribune reported that the number of dead could far exceed the rights group’s count, citing a survivor. Witnesses told the newspaper the aircraft fired more than five missiles directly at the miners’ camps around 6 a.m. local time, destroying them and excavation pits with people still inside. One survivor told AFP thousands of people were working at the site. “After the air strike, people scattered,” he said. “That’s why no one knows exactly how many were killed,” according to DW.
Sudan’s civil war has fueled a surge in risky artisanal mining in remote border areas. Egypt’s border force said in June it had seized 86 tonnes of gold ore, and the UK think tank Chatham House estimates that as much as 60% of Sudan’s unofficial gold exports end up in Egypt.
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