Sudanese Gold and Blood: A Reading of the Crimes of Egyptian Aerial Bombing of Sudanese Al-Ogaidat Mines and the Complicity of the De Facto Authority

Omar Sidahmed - October 2026. What happened at Jebel Al-Ogaidat was no passing incident. Testimonies from surviving miners speak of Egyptian air raids, thousands of workers on site, and many missing in the desert and inside wells. The mountain is located within Sudanese territory, about twenty kilometers from the border, in an artisanal mining belt that sustains thousands of families. The Port Sudan authority termed the massacre an 'incident,' failing to identify the perpetrator or name the victims. The Egyptian narrative claims the strikes targeted Sudanese groups that crossed the border. However, geography contradicts this; the target site is inside Sudan, not Egypt. Cairo must explain how a military operation is carried out on the land of another state. Geography here is measurable. The circulating coordinates for the Jebel Al-Ogaidat site (North Wadi mine) are 21.82 degrees North and 34.11 degrees East, which is south of the 22nd parallel north by a difference of 0.18 degrees, or about twenty kilometers. The 22nd parallel is the line defined by the 1899 agreement as the border of Sudan, a line to which Egypt itself adheres. If the coordinates are correct, the bombed site is within Sudanese territory even according to the line adopted by Cairo, and the controversy surrounding the Hala'ib Triangle located north of this line does not apply to it. Managing a mining site does not confer sovereignty over it, nor does the presence of Sudanese workers. The picture becomes clearer when reading the words of the stakeholder. Egyptian businessman Naguib Sawiris, one of the most prominent Egyptian investors in gold, wrote thanking the Egyptian army for responding to the call of mining companies, praising the imposition of state authority and the deportation of foreign miners. By this, he publicly admitted that the army's move came in response to the request of private companies. The Egyptian army's statement then spoke of a campaign to impose sovereignty and protect wealth, so the two narratives converged: an investor expressing thanks, and an army announcing the clearing of the desert of prospectors. These facts found resonance in the Sudanese political street, far from the warring parties. The Resistance Committees and the forces signatory to the Revolutionary Charter for Establishing People's Authority condemned the Egyptian aerial bombardment of mining sites in Jebel Al-Ogaidat and North Wadi, describing it as a dangerous incident that requires uncovering its circumstances and determining responsibility through an independent investigation that cannot be replaced by silence. Their statement linked what happened to the conflict over mining sites, demanding the disclosure of benefiting networks, contracts, and concessions if it is proven that the attacks are linked to clearing mining sites or redistributing control over them. It went further to demand that the UN Secretary-General present the attacks to the Security Council, and held the de facto authority in Port Sudan responsible for protecting citizens and preserving sovereignty, stating that sovereignty is not 'an official speech' and that relations with any country should not become more important than the lives of Sudanese people. The statement emphasized that condemning Egyptian interference does not absolve any internal party of war crimes, neither the Rapid Support Forces nor the Armed Forces. The Kush Liberation Movement of Sudan issued a statement on October 12, 2026, condemning the killing of Sudanese miners as a result of the Egyptian aerial bombardment, rejecting any violation of Sudan's sovereignty in violation of international law. It demanded the disclosure of the truth and evidence, called on the Egyptian authorities to reveal the facts and respect Sudan's sovereignty, and demanded the protection of workers in mining areas, the guarantee of the rights of the victims' families, and reparation for damages. The movement differs from others in some of its positions, including its call to stop artisanal mining for security and environmental reasons, but it meets them in the essentials: Sudanese blood must not be wasted, sovereignty must not be violated, and the truth must be revealed. Thus, parties with diverse starting points meet on the same demand, from the Resistance Committees and revolutionary forces to other political movements: uncovering the truth, naming the executing party, and holding the Port Sudan authority accountable for its silence. This intersection between parties joined by nothing but belonging to this homeland is stronger than any official narrative. I believe, from Sawiris's statement and the Egyptian army's statement, that there is an agreement and supervision to clean the mines and the area of Sudanese miners, and press coverage points to the activity of an Egyptian mineral resources company in the region. This is further clarified by the fact that the statements of the Port Sudan authority neglected the fact that the bombed sites are within Sudanese territory, and remained silent about naming the aggressor, thus appearing as if they were exonerating the Egyptian side. This silence raises the question about what arrangement or concession makes the squandering of Sudanese blood and land possible. The evidence is sufficient to ask the question sharply: Who authorized a military operation on Sudanese land? Why did the Port Sudan authority remain silent about the identity of the aggressor? Who will get the plots that were evacuated? And by what authority are Sudan's riches disposed of, sold, or leased, by a coup authority that lacks popular mandate? The primary political responsibility lies with the leadership of the Sudanese Army, led by Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. If he authorized it, it is complicity in the crime. If he was unable to prevent it, then his claim of protecting the land and the citizen has fallen. And if he covered it up after it happened, he is a partner in hiding the truth. In contrast to all this, the position of the apologists deserves a stand of condemnation and disapproval. Instead of siding with the miners' blood, they turned to exonerating the party that bombed, and searching for justifications for an act that the stakeholders boasted about and the Egyptian military establishment announced its campaign, and they found nothing in the official narrative that required questioning. They called the massacre an 'incident' without an actor, and spoke of the victims as if they had perished by an unknown fate. This is deliberate blurring of awareness, undertaken by the mouthpieces of the Muslim Brotherhood organization and the war profiteers who support it, accompanied by deceived elites and supporters of the return of the system of corruption and killing to power. These people are not defending sovereignty or a state, but their position in the spoils. Their silence about the name of the aggressor is not neutrality, but participation in suppressing the truth and exonerating the perpetrator before being questioned. Therefore, the minimum requirement is an international, independent investigation that extracts the truth from the rubble of narratives: who ordered, who executed, who knew, and who benefited? Aggression against sovereignty must be met with accountability, documentation, and opening the file before the Security Council and UN mechanisms, not with silence. A Call to the World. What happened in Al-Ogaidat cannot be separated from the broader context in which the Sudanese state has been collapsing since April 2023. This is a war ignited by the Sudanese Islamic Movement, the organizational extension of the Muslim Brotherhood, and led by an ideologized army controlled by this network, in the face of a militia created by its own leadership and empowered with money, weapons, and influence, only to clash with it when they disputed over power and wealth. This is the entity that the United States classified in March 2026 as a global terrorist entity, the Sudanese Islamic Movement and its armed wing, the Al-Bara bin Malik Brigade, for the crimes it committed against civilians. The Sudanese people alone paid the price for this conflict: hundreds of thousands dead, millions displaced within the country and refugees in neighboring countries and the diaspora, destroyed cities, looted resources, and miners bombed by the air force of an aggressor state. I address this call to the world: To the United Nations and the Security Council, to place the Jebel Al-Ogaidat incident on its agenda, and to commission an independent investigative committee to determine the locations of the strikes, the executing party, and the chain of command. To international human rights organizations, to document the testimonies of survivors and the names of the victims and the missing, and to preserve evidence before it is lost to time and obfuscation. To international justice mechanisms, to open the file for accountability, and to do justice to the victims' families with compensation and reparation. To the international community in general, to protect Sudanese civilians, and to compel all parties, internal and external, to respect the sovereignty of Sudan, and to disclose the contracts, companies, and beneficiaries of this war's gold, so that the gold does not turn into fuel for it. This is not just a case of miners who lost their lives. It is a test of whether Sudanese blood has weight in the world's scales, or if it is an acceptable price for calculations of influence and gold.