Egypt army says hundreds of illegal gold miners arrested

Egypt's army on Thursday released images that it said showed illegal gold miners operating near its border with Sudan.

Army spokesman Ahmed Etman said that 151 Egyptian and 540 foreigners were arrested in an operation by the military. More than 6,000 others surrendered themselves prior to the start of the operations, he said.

At least 72 gold miners were killed in October by airstrikes on a gold mine on the Sudan-Egypt border.

A rights organisation accused the Egyptian air force of carrying out the attack.

The army spokesman appeared to deny that any civilians had been targeted.

"Operations were conducted based on precise and confirmed intelligence, complete with coordinates of weapons and ammunition depots, which were targeted using armed unmanned aerial vehicles (drones), no civilians were targeted," Etman said in a press conference.

It was not clear if he was talking about the deadly strike in October.

Gold has played a central part in the war in Sudan, with the insurgent paramilitary Rapid Support Forces smuggling out thousands of tons of gold from the Darfur and Kordofan regions to fund themselves.

More than 50% of gold mined in Sudan was smuggled out of the country, according to a U.N. Panel of Experts Report in 2024.