ºÃÉ«tv

At least twenty other miners were injured in the collapse, it said. Some of the more seriously injured were transferred to the hospital.

Moataz Hajj, a spokesperson for the Sudanese Mineral Resources Company, told The Associated Press Friday that a search operation had managed to free the surviving trapped miners.

The workers had been searching inside mining wells for gold using heavy machinery which caused the collapse, according to witnesses cited in a report published by Sudan’s state-run news agency SUNA.

The dead have been transferred to the nearby town of Wadi Halfa and have since been buried, the state company said.

Sudan is a major gold producer with various mines scattered across the country. Collapses are common as safety standards and maintenance are poor.

In 2021, after a defunct gold mine collapsed in West Kordofan province.