Egyptian forces killed several Sudanese gold miners near the border this week, Sudanese officials said, as fighting across Sudan intensifies and fears grow of a major new escalation in the country's three-year war .
A Cairo-based analyst told The New Arab that the conflict remains particularly volatile in South Kordofan, where the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) continue to pressure army positions while opening additional fronts that threaten to widen the war.
"The RSF has also opened up a front from Blue Nile and is threatening to push in the direction of eastern Sudan," the analyst said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The warning comes as dozens of countries, including the United Kingdom, France and Germany, cautioned the UN Human Rights Council on Thursday that the RSF could soon launch a major assault on El-Obeid, one of Sudan's largest cities, potentially resulting in large-scale atrocities.
Against that backdrop, Sudanese officials accused Egyptian forces of carrying out a deadly attack on gold miners near the countries' shared border.
Witnesses said artillery shelling and airstrikes struck informal mining sites in Sudan's River Nile State on Tuesday, forcing thousands of miners to flee into nearby mountains and caves. Vehicles were reportedly destroyed, although the number of casualties remains unclear.
Amjad Farid, political affairs adviser to Sudanese army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, confirmed on Thursday that Egyptian forces had targeted Sudanese miners near the border, resulting in fatalities.
His statement marked the first official acknowledgement from Khartoum of an incident that had already been widely reported in Sudanese media.
Miners accused the Egyptian military of carrying out the attack, pointing to an Egyptian military camp near the Al-Ansari and Al-Ogaidat mining sites. Egyptian authorities have previously accused Sudanese prospectors of crossing the border to operate near concessions licensed to Egyptian companies.
According to Sudan Tribune, miners said Egyptian border guards have in recent months burned mining equipment, torched temporary shelters and fired live ammunition to force workers away from the area.
The incident comes despite Egypt's close support for the Sudanese Armed Forces in their war against the RSF.
The conflict, which erupted in April 2023, has triggered what the United Nations describes as the world's largest displacement crisis and one of its worst hunger emergencies.
At least 59,000 people have been killed, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), although researchers believe the true toll is likely far higher.
The growing international concern centres on El-Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan state, which has become one of the conflict's most important battlegrounds.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said this week that drone strikes had killed more than 1,000 civilians in Sudan during the first five months of 2026 alone.
"In Sudan, the horrific conflict has expanded and escalated, marked by a sharp increase in the use of drone warfare," Turk told the Human Rights Council in Geneva.
Both the army and the RSF have increasingly relied on drones, though many of the deadliest attacks have been attributed to the paramilitary group.
The RSF controls much of Darfur, where it has repeatedly been accused of atrocities, while the Sudanese army retains control over large parts of northern, eastern and central Sudan as fighting continues across multiple fronts.