Around 100 miners are estimated to have died inside a collapsed gold mine in Sudan's Darfur region and nine rescuers trying to free them are now trapped, a miner said today.
"Nine of the rescue team disappeared when the land collapsed around them yesterday," said the miner, who had visited the scene and asked to remain anonymous.
On Monday the unlicensed desert gold mine began to collapse in Jebel Amir district, more than 200 kilometres (125 miles) northwest of the North Darfur state capital El Fasher.
The stench of death is now seeping out of the baked earth, the miner said.
"Yesterday eight bodies have been found and still they are looking for the others," he said.
"According to a count by people working in the mine, the number of people inside is more than 100."
Yesterday the Jebel Amir district chief, Haroun al-Hassan, said "the number of people who died is more than 60", but it was unclear whether anyone might still be alive.
Hassan could not be reached today.
Earlier he said rescuers were using hand tools out of fear that machinery would cause a further collapse.
But the ground fell around some of the rescuers anyway.
Production from unofficial gold mines has become a key revenue source for the cash-strapped government in Khartoum.
It is also a tempting but dangerous occupation for residents of Sudan's poverty-stricken western region of Darfur which has been devastated by a decade of civil war.
A humanitarian source said earlier this year that close to 70,000 people were digging for gold in Jebel Amir.
Sudan is trying to boost exports of the precious metal and other non-petroleum products after the separation of South Sudan two years ago left Khartoum without three-quarters of its crude oil production.
The lost oil accounted for most of Khartoum's export earnings and half of its fiscal revenues, sending inflation above 40 per cent while the currency plunged in value on the black market.
Sudan's Mining Minister Kamal Abdel Latif said traditional mining produced 41 tonnes of gold worth USD 2.5 billion (1.9 billion euros) from January to November last year.
In 2011, the government estimated there were more than 200,000 unlicenced artisanal gold producers, generating most of the country's output of the resource.
Sudan's central bank has entered the market, trying to buy from the small producers.
Seven weeks of clashes over gold between two Arab tribes in Jebel Amir early this year killed more than 500 members of the Beni Hussein tribal group, a Benni Hussein member of parliament for the area said previously.
