Military announces campaign against ‘illegal mining’ in Eastern Desert

Egypt launched the third phase of an expanded security campaign against illegal gold mining in the Eastern Desert on Monday, as Sudan began investigating deadly border strikes on artisanal miners.

The military sweep follows allegations by Sudanese rights groups and political coalitions accusing the Egyptian air force of carrying out the “North Valley massacre,” an aerial bombardment that reportedly killed dozens of local miners.

The incident has reignited frontier sensitivities, testing ties between Cairo and Khartoum amid conflicting reports over casualties and cross-border sovereignty.

Bilateral tensions mounted further as two Egyptian truck drivers were killed and a third wounded in a shooting in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum. Egypt’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Emigration and Egyptian Expatriates Affairs announced that it was closely monitoring the incident.

In a statement published across its official platforms, the Foreign Ministry said Minister Badr Abdelatty instructed the Egyptian ambassador to swiftly contact Sudanese authorities to establish the facts surrounding the shooting and check on the wounded driver.

Ambassador Nader Zaki, official spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry, confirmed that Sudanese authorities reported arresting the perpetrator.

The military spokesperson for the Egyptian Armed Forces confirmed Monday evening that army and police personnel were participating in the Eastern Desert campaign.

The spokesperson stated that the operation was conducted “after dropping warning leaflets on criminal elements to impose full sovereignty within the borders of the Egyptian state and protect its resources and national wealth.”

The Armed Forces urged the public not to “be swayed by malicious rumors and foreign agendas aimed at destabilizing the brotherly relations between the Egyptian and Sudanese peoples,” pointing to “the peaceful coexistence enjoyed by millions of Sudanese on Egyptian soil” as evidence of deep bilateral ties across political and popular levels.

In a statement issued on Monday, the Sudanese Transitional Council stressed “the need to handle the incident with gravity to ensure uncovering the facts, as well as protecting and respecting borders.”

The council noted that “the leadership in the two brotherly nations remained in contact immediately following the incident to ensure the protection of lives, preserve relations between the two fraternal peoples, determine the circumstances of the incident, and present the facts to the public,” stopping short of leveling any direct accusations against the Egyptian government.

The “North Valley” area, home to gold deposits such as Mount Uqaydat, is situated in the far north of Sudan along the border with Egypt and is not considered a disputed territory. However, the absence of clear border markers leaves prospectors vulnerable to straying into frontier conflict zones due to ambiguous demarcation on the ground, according to the BBC.

Casualty figures and the exact location of the strike varied across statements released by Sudanese rights groups and political coalitions.

A statement by the Sudanese Emergency Lawyers group, which defines itself as an “independent voluntary professional human rights entity,” indicated that preliminary information pointed to 72 people killed.

The Sudan Doctors Network said the bombardment targeted “an area within the border triangle that had previously seen warnings issued to miners regarding their presence and activity at certain mining sites, amid reports that miners had received alerts from the Egyptian side to evacuate specific zones.”

The network, which describes itself as a national nongovernmental civic organization comprising Sudanese medical personnel, stated that the strike killed about 13 people and wounded more than 28 others. 

It noted that the death toll was expected to climb due to the severity of injuries, alongside significant difficulties in accessing medical and emergency services in the targeted area.

For its part, the Sudanese foundational coalition Ta’sees, comprising various political forces, raised the death toll to “more than 200 killed and a large number of wounded, according to a preliminary count.”

The coalition accused “the Egyptian air force” of carrying out the attack, asserting that “the continuous violation of Sudan’s sovereignty, territorial integrity, and the blood of our citizens, reveals an undeniable, glaring truth about Egyptian intentions and greed for Sudan’s resources.”

Amgad Fareid, an advisor to the president of the Sudanese Sovereign Council, said in a post on X that dealing with border violations does not warrant resorting to aerial bombardment, given the existence of multiple channels of communication to address border issues.

A survivor named Abdel Aziz Youssef told AFP that an aircraft struck an artisanal gold mine in a mountainous area on Saturday morning, adding that many were killed or wounded while others fled the area in fear of further strikes. 

Youssef noted that a fighter jet appeared in the sky around 8:00 am on Saturday and “struck five times, many people were killed,” adding, “We ran up the mountain terrified of another strike.”

Al Manassa could not independently verify the claims, and the Egyptian government had not issued an official comment on the incident by the time this report was published. 

However, an Egyptian Foreign Ministry statement referenced a Monday telephone call between Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty and his Sudanese counterpart, Mohieldin Salem, during which both stressed “the mutual respect underpinning relations between the two countries, including respect for each country’s sovereignty, unity, territorial integrity and borders.”

Images circulating on social media, which Al Manassa could not independently verify, showed dozens of bodies scattered across rubble and others wrapped in shrouds.

Meanwhile, Sudanese activists launched an online campaign under the slogan “Rights of the Gold Miners” to demand a swift investigation into the attack on artisanal miners, accusing the Sudanese military of “failing to protect Sudanese sovereignty.” 

The incident was seized upon by some on social media to appeal to Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (Hemedti), commander of the Rapid Support Forces and the primary military and political adversary of the Sovereign Council led by General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, which receives Egyptian backing as the recognized representative of the Sudanese state and its central institutions.

Saturday’s attack is the second of its kind this year targeting the Mount Uqaydat area, which was subjected to airstrikes in June that killed 23 workers at an informal gold mining site.

At the time, Al-Burhan inspected the targeted Al-Ratj area in the Red Sea State’s Halayeb locality, saying the government was monitoring reports of border friction with concern, took full responsibility for protecting its citizens, and would investigate the incidents, though the findings were never made public.

Egypt did not claim responsibility for that raid, but the military spokesperson announced at the time that the Armed Forces had carried out a “large-scale campaign” in cooperation with the Ministry of Interior “against a number of criminal hotspots exploited by criminal organizations and networks to practice illegal activities, including trafficking in narcotics and weapons, illegal gold excavation, and illegal immigration.”

The military spokesperson’s statement at the time noted that the campaign resulted in the arrest of several individuals involved in those illegal activities, including 87 Egyptians and 136 foreigners, and the seizure of 14 vehicles, wireless communication devices, and sums of money in Egyptian pounds and foreign currencies, in addition to quantities of unlicensed weapons and ammunition, and the confiscation of equipment used in illicit mineral prospecting.