Africa · 16 September 2026 to 22 September 2026 · 3 headlines · Al Jazeera
Gold mine collapse in Sudan's West Kordofan
A series of adjoining artisanal mining shafts collapsed at the al-Zaraa gold mine near al-Nuhud in Sudan's West Kordofan state on a Tuesday, killing at least 70 people according to the Kordofan Observatory monitoring group, with later reporting citing a toll as high as 82 and officials warning the count could still rise. Survivors described digging through the night with hand tools in loose, sandy soil after no specialized rescue teams arrived, and miners said the shafts had been dug so close together that each collapse pulled down the ones beside it. Local sources blamed the high death toll on a lack of safety procedures and rescue equipment at the unregulated site.