It was dawn on the morning of June 16, when Ahmed*, a 20-year-old miner from western Sudan who was searching for gold in the mountains of Egypt’s Jabal al-Uqaydat mining region, north of the Halayeb Triangle, awoke to the sound of an airstrike on the mine he was working in. From his vantage point in the Jabal al-Uqaydat mine’s upper flood channel, where he and hundreds of other miners sleep, he could see a strike had hit the lower flood channel. Looking up, he saw planes flying lower overhead. He took out his phone and began to film. In the footage he sent to Mada Masr, people can be seen fleeing amid the chaos, and then there is a large plume of smoke rising into the air from a strike in the distance. “Egyptian planes,” Ahmed said as he filmed. “Egyptian planes, guys.” https://www.madamasr.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/4.mp4 Footage obtained by Mada Masr showing an airstrike on a mine in Egypt’s Jabal al-Uqaydat region, north of the Halayeb Triangle, June 16. Ahmed was sure they were Egyptian planes, because, like a number of other miners in the area who spoke to Mada Masr, he says the strikes last week followed a dayslong security buildup, including reconnaissance flights buzzing overhead. Last Tuesday was not the first time miners had been pushed back by the Egyptian military. While they say they did not have knowledge of the multiple strikes that occurred last week, three Egyptian state officials describe border operations as recurrent. But the strikes were different in scale than any prior operations, miner Mohamed Ali tells Mada Masr, explaining that they targeted wide and extended areas using military aircraft. The eight miners who spoke to Mada Masr say that the military operation that played out last week saw airstrikes hit the two main mines in the area known as Shamal al-Wadi, located in Egyptian territory, followed by an extensive ground deployment to the mines and surrounding areas. Last Tuesday’s strike was followed the next day by additional airstrikes on the Jabal al-Ahmar mine, a miner present during the strikes tells Mada Masr. In the wake of the operation, thousands of miners fled the area. While some reached nearby mining towns, others were unaccounted for, prompting fellow miners and families to fear that they had been killed. Today, many of those feared dead have been accounted for and the death toll from the strikes now stands at a more conservative 23 people, a Sudanese medical source who works on the border tells Mada Masr, compared to the exaggerated estimates circulating on social media in the immediate aftermath of the strikes. But the number of people killed and the scale of the operation speak to emerging points of tension. Two other senior Egyptian officials confirm to Mada Masr that Egypt conducted “airstrikes against Sudanese groups that crossed into Egyptian territory and are engaged in gold mining without obtaining the necessary licenses from the relevant authorities,” in the words of one of the officials. For Egypt, the border region is a lucrative site of gold that should be under singular state control, the Egyptian officials say. But equally, there is a fear in official quarters that informal mining and the network of armed smugglers surrounding it could formalize into more formidable armed groups that complicate the war in Sudan as much as the security situation in southern Egypt. But the scale of last week’s attack was also meant to send a message, one of the Egyptian officials says, as Egypt has grown increasingly concerned that the push and pull of the war’s international dynamic may see Sudan enter into agreements that would require Sudan to have its right of control over the Halayeb Triangle, over which Egypt has exercised effective administrative and military control since the mid-1990s, even as Sudan continues to claim it as part of Red Sea State. “The strikes carry clear messages, both to the region and to audiences inside Sudan, that Egypt will not relinquish its sovereignty over the Halayeb and Shalateen Triangle,” one of the officials says. *** In one way, the events of last week fall within a larger story of the Egyptian state trying to claw back economic control over the vast resource reserves that lie below the ground in the southeast of the country. The Egyptian military spokesperson made that clear in a statement on the operation on Monday. Without specifying a time, date or location, the military spokesperson acknowledged that the armed forces and the Interior Ministry carried out an operation in the “southern military zone” against “criminal hotbeds exploited by criminal organizations and networks to carry out illegal activities, including trafficking in narcotics and weapons, illegal gold mining and illegal immigration.” In addition to posing a threat to national security, they also said these “criminal organizations” bring negative effects on “economic stability, the investment climate and sustainable development efforts.” The effort to militarily support “the investment climate” for gold mining dates back to 2014, when the Egyptian state began to formalize its control over the surge in informal mining that followed the 2011 revolution in the deserts around Aswan. Despite waging a gold war, the offering of gold concessions in the Eastern Desert to investors continues to be plagued by what the state sees as informal encroachments. A source at the Egyptian Mineral Resources and Mining Industries Authority who spoke to Mada Masr in the aftermath of the operation uses the example of a new initiative that the authority intends to launch between Safaga and Berenice along the Red Sea coast. “Investors in most areas of the Eastern Desert are currently unable to claim their designated areas, because prospectors are entering these areas and mining there, even in areas where mining concessions are held,” the source says. This, the source says, is why the military has been active throughout the entire mountain range, not just along the border with Sudan. One of the two senior Egyptian officials agrees, saying that the lucrative gold fields are a primary driver for the operations to remove miners. “The state is currently conducting aerial surveys of mineral resources in the eastern and western deserts in order to update Egypt’s geological maps as part of preparations to utilize them,” the official says. From the ground, miners sensed that something was happening in the days leading up to last week’s operation. In Ras al-Jabal, where some of the largest concentrations of traditional miners operate in Jabal al-Uqaydat, the operation followed days of Egyptian troop movements and aerial surveillance across the border mining zone, five miners tell Mada Masr. Haroun al-Tom, another miner who fled the area after the attack, said a large deployment of Egyptian ground troops arrived from the direction of the Red Sea coast and remained deployed around the mining zone for two days prior to the attack. Surveillance aircraft conducted near-continuous flights between Saturday and Monday before airstrikes began last Tuesday. A key part of the state’s plan has been to lean on the state-owned Shalateen Mineral Resources Company. According to its website, the company aims to legalize the status of those working in informal gold mining in the Eastern Desert and collect the state’s share. Stakes in the company were split between four parties: the Egyptian Mineral Resources and Mining Industries Authority (35 percent), the National Service Projects Organization (34 percent), the National Investment Bank (24 percent), and the Egyptian Company for Mineral Resources (7 percent). According to a map published by the Petroleum Ministry in 2020, the Shalateen company has concessions in the disputed border triangle in stretches that straddle the boundary between Egyptian and disputed territory. Map showing gold mining concessions along the Sudanese-Egyptian border published by the Petroleum Ministry in 2020. Two months ago, miners in the zone within Egyptian territory fought off “the Egyptian mining company,” a common way to refer to the Shalateen company, after it attempted to take over some production sites by force, according to miner Osman al-Siddig. The effort failed after the miners organized resistance, which forced the company to withdraw. In the aftermath of last week’s airstrikes, Ahmed and miner Adam Ishag said Egyptian armored units advanced through Shamal al-Wadi and imposed control over the area, shutting down both mines. Ahmed said the armored units moved to the “Egyptian mining company.” The airstrikes caused panic and drove 5,000 to 7,000 workers to immediately flee, according to Al-Sadig al-Gaily, another miner who fled the attacks. The injured were transported to the nearby Ansary mining area in cars dispatched by local residents, he adds. In the chaos, miners and family members began speculating that the death toll would be high, especially as many people were unaccounted for in the mountainous area. A Sudanese medical source working near the eastern Egyptian-Sudanese border, which lacks extensive medical services, says he has been able to confirm that 23 people were killed in the strike through coordination with other local medical units. To better understand the scale of the attack, the source has also worked with others in the area to identify missing persons. “As for those who disappeared or were reported missing, we found out that they were inside Egyptian territory. Egyptian forces deported them to the Argeen border crossing, and they are currently in the Northern State,” the source says. One of those expelled through the Argeen crossing says the Egyptian military gathered miners swept up in the ensuing raids at certain points before they were transported to Edfu, then to Aswan, and from there to Argeen. Mohamed Ali offers a similar account, saying he was separated from some of his fellow miners when the airstrikes happened. He later learned from them that the Egyptian military had transported them in military vehicles to the Argeen crossing, where they entered Sudan. If the goal was to halt all informal mining in the sites, last week’s operation was successful for now, as Ishag says that the two mining camps are now largely deserted. *** But rather than merely dealing with small-scale informal miners, Egypt’s larger concern centers on the security of the border region, according to the Egyptian official. Jabal al-Uqaydat and the nearby Jabal al-Ahmar mines have drawn thousands of Sudanese and Egyptian miners, traders and laborers over the years. The mines sit about 50 km inside Egyptian territory, according to Mohamed Ali, the miner who works in the border region. Ali explained, however, that the sphere of movement, economic influence and point at which mining activity begins lies inside Sudanese territory and then extends into Egypt by around 50-70 km. The gold rush has thus transformed the surrounding region’s political, economic and security makeup. This can be seen south of the Halayeb Triangle, in Sudan’s Ratag locality, where the mining boom gave rise to a sprawling commercial hub. Miner Osman al-Siddig says that the only official Sudanese armed presence in the border area consists of a small contingent from the joint force of military-allied armed movements, numbering no more than seven combat vehicles. But rather than providing security, the force has focused primarily on collecting unofficial levies from miners, he says. Workers have long complained of excessive fees and the confiscation of portions of their gold production under threat of force, he says. The absence of an official state presence from the Sudanese side has given way to competition among tribal communities seeking to control access to mines, trade routes and markets. That competition has fueled long-running tensions between members of the Rashaida and Bishari tribes in the Ratag area, with signs of the growing friction emerging on June 12. By June 17, disputes over land rich in gold deposits and the lucrative markets that developed around the mining sector had escalated into reciprocal armed mobilizations, according to miner Al-Rashid al-Fadil. Fadil, who witnessed the events, says both sides began gathering fighters and weapons, bringing them close to direct confrontation. The unrest prompted an emergency meeting of Sudan’s Red Sea State’s security committee on the same day, according to a government source in the state. The meeting focused on developments in Ratag, including the tribal dispute and the spread of weapons linked to competition over mining sites and commercial markets. The committee instructed security agencies to deploy immediately to the area to contain the situation and arrest individuals involved in the disturbances, the source says. Tribal leaders from both sides also moved to defuse tensions. According to a source from the Rashaida tribe, deputy tribal head Mubarak Ahmed Hamid called on members to exercise restraint and avoid being drawn into calls for discord. On the Bishari side, Ibrahim Mustafa, the head of the tribe’s youth committee, accused what he described as cells linked to armed militias of attempting to destabilize the region and provoke tribal conflict. He urged authorities to intervene quickly to prevent further deterioration. On Monday, Sudanese Armed Forces Commander-in-Chief and Transitional Sovereignty Council Chair Abdel Fattah al-Burhan met with tribal figures in Ratag to try to diffuse the tension, according to a source who attended the meeting. Burhan meets with tribal members in Ratag on Monday to try to diffuse tensions. Courtesy of a source that attended the meeting. For Egypt, the tribal tensions underscore a prevailing concern about the gold trade. “The concern is that [the Sudanese groups active in gold mining] could develop into armed entities, a force on the ground that could monopolize control over the border region, creating major security challenges that we do not need. It is already the case that the border area witnesses, every now and then, armed tribal clashes and conflicts stemming from attempts to control some mountainous areas and monopolize gold prospecting and mining operations there,” the first Egyptian official says. If things were allowed to continue to evolve, these groups could then build security, social and political alliances and communicate with groups outside the country, complicating the situation in eastern Sudan, which has largely remained out of the fray in Sudan’s war, as much as in southeastern Egypt, according to the official. This is why a firm and decisive approach was “necessary,” in the source’s estimation. While the Egyptian official questions why the Sudanese government has allowed for a lax enforcement of the border, a Sudanese military source tells Mada Masr that they continuously warn miners against crossing the border, saying that such movement leads to repeated “unfortunate incidents” similar to what played out last week. Burhan addressing the media after the Ratag mediation session. Speaking from Ratag after the mediation session on Monday, Burhan pledged greater state intervention to clamp down on the presence of arms and extortion. He also called on people in the area to “respect the borders.” “Regarding our northern neighbor, […] we also appreciate and respect the people. We request that people do not cross the borders and do not go over there, so they do not bring trouble upon themselves or bring trouble to the state. We have heard that some people crossed over and were struck and all that,” Burhan said. “As a state and as a government, we ask our brothers and our people to respect the borders. No one should cross over.” Currently, the Sudanese state is conducting investigations into the Egyptian operation, according to the Sudanese military source. The Red Sea State security committee, the Security and Defense Council and Sudan’s Foreign Ministry will submit their reports to higher authorities, after which a public statement is expected. *** However, the scale of last week’s military operation exceeded that of previous border security campaigns, whether to facilitate more state access or impose new security logics. For both Egyptian officials, the campaign comes at a time when Egypt is beginning to doubt Sudan’s intentions toward the disputed border triangle. Over the course of the war in Sudan, Egypt has tried to secure a concession from Sudan on the triangle in exchange for military support, multiple Egyptian officials have previously told Mada Masr. Speaking after the fall of Fasher in October, a source in the Transitional Sovereignty Council, the executive authority that has ruled Sudan since 2019, told Mada Masr that if Egypt did not step in to provide full military support, the Sudanese military would be facing the need for drastic steps. One would see Sudan moving to finalize the maritime demarcation with Saudi Arabia in order to gain more support from the kingdom, a matter that would require, under current negotiations, settling Sudan’s claim of sovereignty over the Halayeb triangle. “Any unilateral move by Khartoum to try and secure arms for its battle risks harming relations between Sudan and Egypt,” the source said at the time, explaining that such a move would upset Egypt’s Red Sea calculations. Egypt eventually did upscale its support for the Sudanese military by providing Turkey access to airbases in the south of Egypt. However, that support came with an underlying desire by Egypt and Turkey to stabilize the situation into zones of influence so that a larger political settlement could be reached. That settlement has remained elusive, and, today, Egypt feels increasingly wary of the growing rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Sudan that has played out as the war continues to expand and escalate in intensity. “This gives last week’s operation a regional dimension, particularly if there is talk of new alliances and coordination arrangements that the region may witness in the coming period due to developments in the Middle East,” the second senior Egyptian official says. “[Last week’s operation] carries clear messages both to the region and to audiences inside Sudan that Egypt will not relinquish its sovereignty over the Halayeb and Shalateen Triangle.” *** Since last week’s events, images of the airstrikes on the two mines have swept through social media, prompting a storm of criticism against Egypt from Sudanese commentators. Two of the Egyptian state officials acknowledged the volume of the criticism, dismissing it as “propaganda” from the Rapid Support Forces. “If people violate your borders, they should expect that you will not stay still,” one official says. “At the end of the day, such confrontations come with casualties.” Whatever the aftermath of last week’s operation could be, with no permanent security solution in the area, no resolution to the Sudan war in sight and no economic opportunities to the thousands that flock to the deserts and mountains of Sudan and Egypt, what all sources described as a recurrent phenomenon with “expected casualties” will likely happen again. *pseudonymThe post What is behind the Egyptian military operations in the southeastern desert? first appeared on Mada Masr.
