At least 14 workers are dead after a gold mine collapsed in northern Sudan, mining authorities said Friday.
The fatal collapse happened after one of the hillsides that surround the Jebel Al-Ahmar gold mine - situated near the Egyptian border - subsided Thursday afternoon, the Sudanese Mineral Resources Company said in a short statement.
At least 20 other miners were injured in the collapse, it said. Some of the more seriously injured were transferred to the hospital.
Moataz Hajj, a spokesperson for the Sudanese Mineral Resources Company, told The Associated Press Friday that a search operation had managed to free the surviving trapped miners.
The workers had been searching inside mining wells for gold using heavy machinery which caused the collapse, according to witnesses cited in a report published by Sudan’s state-run news agency SUNA.
The dead have been transferred to the nearby town of Wadi Halfa and have since been buried, the state company said.
Sudan is a major gold producer with various mines scattered across the country. Collapses are common as safety standards and maintenance are poor.
In 2021, 31 people were killed after a defunct gold mine collapsed in West Kordofan province.
