A deadly attack hit traditional gold-mining sites in Jabal al-Uqaydat, northeast of Atbara in Sudan, on Tuesday, leaving at least 15 people dead and more than 50 wounded. Witnesses and miners said unidentified aircraft, likely drones, fired three missiles at the mining area near the border with Egypt. Residents said the site had been under close surveillance for a week before the strike, with aircraft filming the area ahead of what appeared to be a precise bombardment.
One surviving miner said, "The plane fired three missiles, which caused dozens of dead and wounded." Videos from the scene showed metal fragments believed to be from the missiles and a small mosque built by the miners that was destroyed in the attack. The strike turned the desert area into what witnesses described as a scene of mass killing.
Sudanese miners and local political figures directly accused the Egyptian army of carrying out the attack. They said it was done under the pretext that the miners had entered territory linked to Egyptian mining companies. While clashes have occurred before between Egyptian ground forces and Sudanese miners, this was described as an unprecedented escalation because it involved aerial bombardment inside Sudan.
The violence triggered a mass flight of about 6,000 miners from the bombed areas toward Al-Ansari Market, about 200 kilometers away. Injured people were evacuated by trucks to hospitals in serious condition. The Sudanese People's Party condemned the strike and criticized the authorities' silence, calling it a massacre of unarmed miners on sovereign territory. No official has yet claimed responsibility, but tensions on the Sudanese-Egyptian border are now at a boiling point, raising fears of a much larger conflict over the desert's gold.
