Six miners die in a Sudanese gold-shaft collapse as Amnesty accuses M23 of trafficking Congolese gold to Rwanda

At least six artisanal miners were killed and dozens injured when four shafts collapsed at the Oni El Dakkan mine in Sudan's Red Sea state, Radio Dabanga reported. Miners said the injured were taken for treatment in conditions that the country's medical system can barely provide.

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Amnesty International says fighters of the M23 group abused miners and trafficked gold and coltan to Rwanda, conduct the organisation says may amount to the war crime of pillage. Amnesty's secretary general Agnès Callamard said Rwanda has continued to profit illegally from Congolese mineral wealth. Rwanda's government has repeatedly rejected accusations of that kind in previous reports and denies controlling M23.

The medical context is deteriorating in parallel. The preparatory committee of the Sudanese doctors' union warns that the health system is approaching collapse as disease spreads amid poor sanitation, overcrowding and the destruction of medical facilities during the war. Separately, 202 Sudanese refugees returned from Uganda on two voluntary repatriation flights to Khartoum and Port Sudan.

Gold trading near 4,370 dollars an ounce creates an income opportunity that ungoverned territory converts into hand-dug shafts and armed control of deposits. The metal that serves as a store of value in financial centres is produced at the margin in places where safety standards, taxation and title do not function, and both the deaths in Red Sea state and the trafficking allegations in eastern Congo follow from that price.