At least 82 people have been killed and 50 others injured after a gold mine collapsed in Sudan’s West Kordofan state, local officials said on Wednesday, as rescuers continued searching for an unknown number of workers trapped underground.
The latest toll marks a sharp rise from earlier reports that at least 60 miners had died in the disaster at the al-Zara mine near En Nahud.
A local administration official in West Kordofan said 82 deaths had now been confirmed, while 50 people were injured.
An unknown number of miners remained buried beneath the rubble, the official said, warning that rescue operations were being carried out with basic equipment and that the death toll could rise further.
A source in the Rapid Support Forces, which controls the area, also confirmed the updated casualty figure to AFP.
The collapse struck a network of adjoining artisanal mining shafts, where workers dig for gold using basic tools and operate with little protective equipment.
Survivors said the proximity of the shafts appeared to worsen the disaster, with the collapse of one tunnel triggering failures in neighbouring pits.
“We do not know how many people are still inside,” survivor Khair al-Sayed Jabara said.
Residents and miners have been attempting to remove rocks and soil by hand as they search for survivors and recover bodies.
Jabara said heavy machinery was urgently needed to reach those still trapped.
Another miner, al-Amin Suleiman, said shafts across the site had been dug extremely close together, meaning the collapse of one could bring down several others.
Sudan has a large artisanal gold-mining industry employing workers in informal sites where safety regulations and emergency equipment are often limited.
Miners frequently work in poorly reinforced shafts and can also face exposure to hazardous chemicals used to extract gold from ore.
The al-Zara disaster is among the deadliest mining accidents reported in Sudan in recent years, with authorities and residents continuing recovery operations as the full scale of the collapse remains unclear.
