Emergency Lawyers, a Khartoum-based rights group, accused the Egyptian military of targeting civilian miners in the North Wadi area of Jabal al-Uqaydat, a mountainous border zone between Sudan and Egypt. Images shared by rights monitors and allegedly from the site showed bodies wrapped in funeral shrouds among chaotic scenes.
The group's account could not be independently verified, and Egyptian authorities have made no public comment on the incident.
The border has a long history of unresolved tensions. In 1899, the British and Egyptian governments designated the 22nd parallel north as the dividing line between the two countries on maps, but the boundary has never been physically demarcated. The area's gold wealth has left it open to dispute and lawlessness, with Sudanese communities left exposed.
Abdul Kareem Al-Almin Ahmed, a specialist in Egypt-Sudan border affairs, said Sudanese territorial borders have suffered historical negligence that continues today. "The presence of the Egyptian Border Guard forces near the region, amid a complete lack of Sudanese military or administrative presence, has left the Sudanese highly vulnerable to Egyptian violations and encroachment," he told Al Jazeera. He called on the Sudanese state to take the matter to the United Nations as an encroachment on Sudanese territory, followed by immediate physical demarcation of border points and the establishment of observation posts along the entire frontier.
The attack follows a similar incident in June, when another artisan gold mine in Jabal al-Uqaydat was targeted by drones and artillery and a number of people were killed. The Egyptian army said at the time that it had carried out an operation "within Egyptian territory" and detained 223 people. Egyptian security forces continue to sweep the border region to combat what they describe as illegal migration, drug smuggling and illegal mining.
Beyond Jabal al-Uqaydat, the two countries have a deeper territorial dispute over the Halaib Triangle, a 20,580 square kilometre area on the Red Sea coast that has been a flashpoint for more than a century, rooted in conflicting colonial-era maps.