At least 31 miners were killed and eight missing in Sudan on Tuesday when a rudimentary gold mine collapsed, a government official said.
The disaster occurred near Nuhud, a town about 500 kilometres (310 miles) west of Khartoum, said Khaled Dahwa, the head of the state-run Mineral Resources Company in West Kordofan.
“Thirty-one traditional miners were killed be-cause of a mine collapsing,” he told AFP, adding one person survived and eight others were still miss-ing.
Another official at the company said four min-ers were killed at the same mine in January. “Au-thorities at the time shut down the mine and in-stalled security but a couple of months ago they left,” he said.
Artisanal gold mining is a dangerous profession in Sudan largely due to ramshackle infrastructure. It flourished around a decade ago in various parts of country, with people digging the ground using ex-cavators in hopes of unearthing the precious metal.
About two million artisanal miners produce about 80 percent of the country’s annual gold pro-duction of around 80 tonnes, according to official figures.
Sudan, one of the world’s poorest countries, has recently suffered runaway inflation and embarked on tough economic reforms, including slashing sub-sidies on petrol and diesel and launching a managed currency float.
It is also reeling from political turbulence in the wake of a coup led military chief General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan on October 25.—AP
