At Least 82 People Are Dead After a Gold Mine Collapsed in Sudan's West Kordofan. The Rescuers Have One Privately Owned Forklift and Are Digging by Hand More Than 30 Meters Down.

At least 82 people have been confirmed dead after a gold mine caved in near the town of Nuhud in Sudan's West Kordofan province, volunteers and survivors said Wednesday, and dozens more are believed to be trapped underground with almost no equipment on hand to reach them.

The collapse at the al-Zara mine happened Sunday and spread through a warren of interconnected shafts, according to the Emergency Response Rooms, the network of local volunteers that has become Sudan's de facto humanitarian service during the country's three-year civil war. Suleiman Abu Hmeida, a member of the group, said the death toll had climbed as bodies were recovered over three days, "but dozens remain unaccounted for."

Survivors described a rescue effort carried out largely with bare hands. "We do not have the machinery to lift dirt and stones and search for survivors at depths of more than 30 meters," said Khairal-Sayed Gabara, a miner who escaped. Al-Amin Suliman, another survivor, said simply: "There are still people stuck inside." The only heavy equipment at the site, according to the Associated Press, is a single privately owned forklift. The mine is an informal, unregulated operation of the kind that draws hundreds of thousands of Sudanese into narrow, unsupported tunnels for a chance at the gold that is one of the country's few remaining sources of cash.

The area is controlled by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, which have been fighting the Sudanese military since April 2023 in a war that the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project says has killed at least 59,000 people and that has displaced more than 12 million. The RSF holds most of Sudan's gold-producing regions in Darfur and Kordofan, and large quantities of the metal are smuggled out through neighboring countries and the Gulf to finance the group's operations. U.N. investigators have documented as many as 2,000 Colombian mercenaries flying drones for the RSF, paid in part from that trade.

Sudan is one of Africa's largest gold producers, and the artisanal sector that supplies most of it has a long record of deadly collapses. Fourteen miners died in a cave-in in 2023 and 38 in another in 2021. Those collapses at least drew a government response. Today, with the army-backed government's reach limited and the RSF running the Kordofan mines as a revenue stream, there is no authority on the ground with either the means or the incentive to enforce safety rules.

The Emergency Response Rooms said they had appealed for excavators and medical supplies from aid groups operating in the region, but access to RSF-held parts of Kordofan has been sporadic throughout the war. With each day that passes, volunteers said, the chance of finding anyone alive in the deeper shafts falls toward zero.