RSF Seizes Gold Mines on Tri-Border Area, Forcing Workers to Flee
Rapid Support Forces took control of more than 36 artisanal gold mines in the Libyan, Egyptian, Sudanese border, expelling miners and triggering mass flight.
Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have seized all artisanal gold mining sites in the border triangle between Sudan, Egypt and Libya, forcing thousands of miners to flee across the desert under threat of arrest and violence, according Darfur24.
Miners who escaped and independent local transport operators said that they were told that they had one week to clear out through the Egyptian border by RSF gunmen.
The RSF took control of the border triangle in June 2025 after Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) units and allied groups withdrew into northern Sudan. In October, RSF units began forcibly removing miners from gold-producing wells and camps, according to three miners who reached Wadi Halfa in Sudan’s Northern State.
“They surrounded us with six armed vehicles. The soldiers ordered everyone to leave immediately,” said Mohamed Issa Sharaf al-Din, an artisanal miner who crossed into Egypt before being transferred by the Egyptian military back to Sudan.
“They told us we had one week to clear out through the Egyptian border.”
Sharaf al-Din said miners who resisted were threatened with transfer to the RSF’s detention facility in Nyala, South Darfur.
Another miner, Ibrahim Haroun Mohamed, said RSF personnel took control of more than 36 active mining shafts, which he described as producing “large and continuous quantities of gold”. Haroun said he fled along with more than a hundred other workers, leaving behind equipment and personal belongings.
The miners’ accounts are consistent with local transport operator Hamri, who works in the Al-Khennaq area adjacent to the border triangle. Hamri said an RSF air strike hit the only functioning water source — a well called Um Al-Khair, located roughly 70 kilometres from the mining sites — triggering an exodus.
“When Um Al-Khair was hit, nearly everyone left. Without water, the mines cannot operate,” Hamri said.
Many miners initially relied on trucked water from across the Egyptian border, but RSF patrols demanded that all mining operations stop, leading to more departures.
Independent satellite-based conflict mapping published by the ACLED Project(Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project) has recorded intensified clashes between RSF and Sudanese military aircraft in the same corridor since September 2025. The UN Panel of Experts on Sudan has previously documented that RSF leaders derive significant revenue from informal gold extraction and cross-border smuggling, particularly through Darfur and Libya.
According to miners and witnesses, thousands of workers have scattered into Egypt and Libya, while others returned to their home states in Sudan. Sudan’s Ministry of Minerals estimates that 2 million people depend on artisanal mining nationwide, producing 83 per cent of Sudan’s total gold output, making it one of the country’s most important remaining export earners, according to a 2024 report from the Central Bank of Sudan.
Approximately 15,000 miners were operating in the border triangle before the RSF takeover, according to several miners who worked at the site.
Sudan’s gold industry — long dominated by informal miners and networks linked to paramilitary forces — has become a critical source of foreign currency since the collapse of state revenues after the war began in April 2023.
The Sudanese government has not issued an official statement on the seizure of the mines.
Reporting by Awad Mustafa