Fifteen miners were killed and one was injured when part of a decommissioned gold mine collapsed in northern Sudan, the state-owned Sudanese Mineral Resources Company said. The incident occurred at the Mohamed Tawfiq mine in Wadi Halfa, close to the Egyptian border.
According to the company, miners had entered the closed site without authorization before sections of the mine gave way. The published report did not identify the victims, describe the injured person's condition or say whether rescue teams were still searching the workings. It also did not provide a technical cause for the collapse beyond the failure of part of the mine.
The deaths occurred amid a wartime expansion of risky, informal extraction. Sudan's conflict began in April 2023 between the national army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. Gold has helped finance both sides alongside backing from abroad, while the war has severely damaged the wider economy and removed other sources of work. That pressure has driven more people toward mining despite unsafe conditions.
Artisanal and small-scale operations account for most of Sudan's gold production, according to the report. Much of that activity takes place in unofficial zones or at sites that have already been shut. Such workings frequently lack basic safety protections. The use of hazardous chemicals also creates health risks for people living around mining areas, extending the impact beyond accidents underground.
The sector was a major employer even before the war pushed 25 million people into acute food insecurity. Industry figures cited in the source estimated that more than two million people worked in artisanal mining before the conflict. For households cut off from regular employment, closed mines can still offer material worth extracting, but the Wadi Halfa collapse showed the lethal consequences of entering sites no longer maintained for safe operation.
Sudan is among Africa's leading gold producers. The minerals company reported that output reached 70 tonnes in 2025, its highest level in five years. Army-aligned Finance Minister Gibril Ibrahim told AFP that official exports accounted for just 20 tonnes of that output. Officials say much of the remainder leaves Sudan through smuggling networks, limiting public revenue even as the mineral supports wartime economies.
No evidence in the published report connected the Mohamed Tawfiq victims directly to an armed group or smuggling operation. The supported account is narrower: miners entered a decommissioned site, a partial collapse killed 15 and injured one, and the accident occurred within an industry where conflict, lost livelihoods and weak safety controls have made unauthorized extraction widespread. The company reported no further casualties.
