By: OrePulse

Two artisanal miners were killed and three others were injured on Friday when an abandoned well collapsed at the Al-Shuhada gold mine in Gedaref state, in eastern Sudan, the state-run Sudanese Mineral Resources Company said.

The collapse was the latest in a run of similar accidents at small-scale mining sites across Sudan, where artisanal operations had expanded rapidly even as safety enforcement at many locations remained limited, the company said.

The company said the five miners had gone into the well knowing that operations at the site had already been halted by local authorities and police. It did not specify when that suspension had been ordered, nor how the miners gained access to the closed well, and it gave no account of events in the moments before the collapse.

Following the incident, the company's General Administration of Environment and Safety repeated its standing warning against entering wells that had been abandoned or officially closed on safety grounds. The administration said closure orders issued at unsafe or suspended mining sites had to be respected, and it called on miners and other site workers to stay away from any location that authorities had ordered shut. It did not announce new measures to enforce the existing suspension at Al-Shuhada beyond reiterating the warning.

Officials said gold mine collapses had become more frequent at artisanal sites across northern, eastern and western Sudan in recent months. The most severe recent case came in September, when a separate collapse near the town of En Nahud, in West Kordofan state, killed more than 60 miners. That toll was far higher than Friday's casualties, though officials linked both incidents to the same underlying hazard: extraction at wells and shafts not built or maintained to withstand collapse.

The Sudanese Mineral Resources Company said artisanal mining had grown into a major part of Sudan's economy, with the sector employing more than two million people. These small-scale, largely informal operations accounted for more than 80 percent of the country's total gold output, the company said. It added that many sites continued to operate without basic safety requirements or rescue equipment, a gap officials had repeatedly cited when similar accidents occurred.

No additional details on the condition of the three injured miners, or on any rescue or recovery effort under way at the Al-Shuhada site, were immediately available. The Sudanese Mineral Resources Company's statement did not say whether anyone had been held accountable for the miners' presence at the suspended well.