Gold, Borders, and Blame: The High Stakes Behind Egypt’s Airstrikes in Sudan’s Northern Frontier
KHARTOUM / CAIRO – General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, head of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), has drawn sharp domestic criticism over his muted reaction to a devastating airstrike that left dozens of artisanal gold miners dead near the Egyptian border in Jabal al-Uqaydat on Saturday, October 10, 2026.
Miners and activists identified the aircraft as Egyptian Air Force jets as videos of the dead spread across Sudanese social media, while Sudan’s Sovereignty Council and the Port Sudan authorities said nothing for two days. Sudan Tribune placed the site in the far north of Red Sea State, and The New York Times reported that it lay in an army-controlled area largely untouched by the war, according to the Africa Center for Strategic Studies’ summary of the Times report.
The toll remains disputed, with published figures ranging from 13 to more than 200. Two survivors told AFP that a jet struck the site at about 8 a.m. while thousands of people were working there.
Emergency Lawyers, a Khartoum-based rights group, put the toll at 72 the next day, citing preliminary information, Al Jazeera reported. The Sudan Doctors Network recorded 13 dead and 28 wounded on the same day and warned that the figure would rise, the Associated Press reported.
Later counts were higher: two eyewitnesses told The New York Times that at least 65 people were killed and 120 or more wounded, and three survivors told Sudan Tribune that at least 200 died and more than 15,000 workers fled into caves and mountains. A health official treating the wounded told the Sudanese outlet Ayin that the toll was likely between 150 and 250.
Egypt has not acknowledged the strike, though its officials have defended its purpose. Two Egyptian security officials told Reuters the operation was meant to end “chaos” along the border and stop Egyptian and Sudanese groups from seizing control of mining areas, according to a Reuters report carried by SABC.
On October 12, military spokesman Colonel Ahmed Atman said the army and police were pressing ahead with the third phase of a campaign against illegal gold mining in the Eastern Desert, after dropping leaflets warning criminal elements, to enforce full sovereignty within Egypt’s borders, Asharq Al-Awsat reported. His statement placed the operation inside Egypt and did not mention an airstrike in Sudan. A separate army statement urged people in both countries to rely on official sources and dismissed what it called rumours and foreign agendas.
Emergency Lawyers rejected Cairo’s framing, accusing Egyptian aircraft of targeting civilian miners and saying the repeated attacks showed an Egyptian desire to take control of Sudan’s natural resources, AFP reported.
Khartoum’s first response came on October 12, when the Sovereignty Council expressed condolences for Sudanese citizens killed in the border area and announced a fact-finding committee of prosecutors, judicial officials and security representatives, Sudan Tribune reported. The council said Sudanese and Egyptian leaders had been in contact since the incident, and it stopped short of blaming Egypt, Reuters reported.
Al-Burhan’s silence over the latest airstrike in Shamal al-Wadi was not so much surprising as it was a source of numerous questions about the concept of sovereignty, which he repeatedly presents himself as the guardian of in Sudan.
The council’s statement followed the pattern Al-Burhan set after an earlier strike on the same mine. On June 16, two airstrikes hit Jabal al-Uqaydat at 6 a.m. and another struck a nearby site, eyewitnesses told the Sudanese platform Sahih Sudan, The Standard reported. A Sudanese medical source later put the June toll at 23, Mada Masr reported.
Ground operations followed on June 21, when a force of about 60 military vehicles surrounded mining sites in the Wadi El Atri area, opened fire and arrested 67 Sudanese miners, the rights group Darfur Victims Advocacy said, citing witnesses, Radio Dabanga reported. Egypt’s military said it had detained 223 people, including 136 foreign nationals, and officials at the Argeen crossing said more than 3,000 deported Sudanese miners had passed through on their way to Dongola, according to the same report.
Al-Burhan first addressed the June strike in a speech to residents of Al-Ritaj in Red Sea State, where he said Sudan respected its neighbours to the north and east. “Our northern neighbour must be respected, and its borders must not be crossed, so that people do not cause problems for themselves and for the state,” he said, according to Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, which published the remarks in Arabic.
In October, al-Burhan once again ordered an investigation without naming the party responsible for the attack, while his foreign relations adviser, Amjad Farid, described the attack as “an unjustified and unacceptable crime”. Neither that statement nor his June call for a response grounded in the logic of the state, reported by The Standard, was followed by a public formal protest to Egypt.
Jabal al-Uqaydat lies within the gold-rich Nubian Shield geological belt, and much of the gold mined along this border ends up in Egypt. A March 2025 Chatham House report by Ahmed Soliman and Suliman Baldo estimated that unofficial and smuggled exports to Egypt account for about 60 per cent of the gold produced in Northern, River Nile and Red Sea states, at a rate of more than 100 kilograms a day and a total of more than 60 tonnes in 2023 and 2024. Official gold exports to Egypt in 2024 were worth about $16 million, around 1 per cent of Sudan’s total, according to Central Bank of Sudan data cited in the report.
On the ground, the mine itself has been contested. Survivors told Sudan Tribune that Egyptian border guards had earlier taken control of the mine and set up a camp there before dismantling it, that an Egyptian patrol had warned them the area lay inside Egypt, and that they regularly saw heavy machinery and trucks hauling rock across the border, the paper reported. In March, Sudanese miners expelled an Egyptian mining company from a disputed border area and burned some of its equipment, and the clashes with Egyptian border guards that followed killed at least nine miners, local officials told Darfur24, which reported the account in June.
Miners have also questioned the conduct of Sudan’s own forces. A miner told Alhurra that the Joint Forces unit guarding the mountain, drawn from pro-government Darfur armed movements, withdrew a day before the June strike, after workers had a run-in with staff of an Egyptian mining company nearby. Miners quoted by Sahih Sudan said the unit left four hours before the attack, according to The Standard. Workers told Alhurra that the withdrawal and the government’s muted response led them to suspect the two governments had coordinated to clear miners from the area for the Egyptian company, though no evidence has established such coordination.
The suspicion draws on how closely Cairo and Al-Burhan’s army are aligned. Egypt is one of Al-Burhan’s closest regional allies, though it regards the war along its 1,200-kilometre border with Sudan as a threat to its own security, AFP reported.
Satellite images reviewed by Reuters showed a Turkish-made Bayraktar Akinci drone at Egypt’s East Oweinat airstrip, about 60 kilometres from the Sudanese border, The New Arab reported in February, and The New York Times reported that drones operating from the base were carrying out strikes inside Sudan. An analysis published by The Horn Review in June argued that the army stayed silent over the strikes because it depends on its alliance with Egypt to fight the Rapid Support Forces.
Political groups, armed movements and rights organisations have called for an international investigation, Sudan Tribune reported. The civilian Somoud alliance, led by former prime minister Abdalla Hamdok, said the targeting of civilians could not be justified on security grounds and held the authorities appointed by the armed forces responsible for what happens in areas under their control, The National reported.
The question of where the strikes landed remains open. Egypt said its June operation took place inside Egyptian territory, and the Sudan Doctors Network described the October site as reportedly part of Egypt, while Sudanese groups say the raids hit Sudanese territory, Egypt Independent reported.
The area lies near Hala’ib and Shalateen, the triangle claimed by Sudan and administered by Egypt; Mada Masr placed Shamal al-Wadi north of the triangle, and AFP reported that the Al-Ansari gold market, where survivors fled, lies just south of it.
With reports indicating that foreign drones and aerial assets operating near the border have provided vital tactical support to the Sudanese army, risking a diplomatic rupture with Cairo is a price Khartoum has thus far avoided paying. As civilian alliances, political groups, and rights organizations continue to demand an international investigation into the targeting of civilians, the underlying question of sovereignty and the protection of Sudan’s natural wealth remains dangerously unresolved.
