Following the airstrikes on gold mines near the Sudan–Egypt border, a contest emerged over the political significance of the tragedy. Fabricated statements attributed to Sudanese and Egyptian public figures circulated on social media, a group affiliated with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces accused Cairo of exploiting Sudan’s resources, and Ethiopia’s state news agency presented unverified responsibility for the airstrikes as an established fact. An analysis of publications from June and October 2026 reveals a mechanism through which actual violence is exploited to reinforce political accusations and introduce them into foreign information environments.
On 12 October 2026, a statement attributed to Minni Arko Minawi, Governor of Darfur and leader of the Sudan Liberation Movement, appeared on Sudanese Facebook pages. According to the circulated statement, Minawi had firmly declared that he would not remain silent about Egypt’s actions if the Egyptian military’s responsibility for the airstrikes on gold mines was confirmed. The statement was false. The Sudanese fact-checking outlet Beam Reports examined the governor’s official communication channels, public statements and interviews but found no evidence confirming that he had made the statement. The fabricated message was disseminated, among others, by pages with 569,000, 353,000, 284,000 and 210,000 followers. Two days later, on 14 October, Minawi did make a public statement. He met with Egyptian Ambassador Yasser Sorour and the Egyptian consul in Port Sudan. He called for the findings of investigations to be made public, emphasised the need to protect citizens, and warned against spreading unverified accusations and inciting hostility between Sudanese and Egyptians. According to Sudan Tribune, the governor explained his involvement by noting that most of the reported victims of the airstrikes came from Darfur. Egyptian diplomats offered condolences to the families of those killed and declared their willingness to cooperate in clarifying the circumstances of the incident. This did not, however, constitute a public acknowledgement of responsibility for the attack.
The false statement attributed to Minawi suggested that he might adopt a more confrontational position towards Egypt. In contrast, during his meeting with Egyptian diplomats on 14 October, the governor demanded clarification of the circumstances surrounding the airstrikes while calling for restraint in mutual accusations and the escalation of tensions. Neither the author of the fabrication nor the entity responsible for its dissemination has yet been identified. Nevertheless, a specific manipulation technique can be identified: attributing to a recognisable political figure a position that was not reflected in his public statements. This was not the first such incident associated with airstrikes against Sudanese miners.
Airstrikes on Gold Mines and the Dispute over Responsibility
On 10 October 2026, military aircraft carried out strikes against informal gold-mining sites in the Shamal al-Wadi area, near the Sudan–Egypt border. According to Sudan Tribune, three survivors described attacks on mining camps and shafts where workers were present. Some structures reportedly collapsed as a result of the explosions. The injured were transported to nearby medical facilities, while other miners fled into the mountains and surrounding desert areas. Witnesses accused the Egyptian air force of carrying out the strikes. They also reported that more than 200 people may have been killed.
The death toll, however, remains undetermined. The Sudan Doctors Network reported at least 13 people killed and 28 injured, while Emergency Lawyers reported 72 fatalities. Higher estimates were based primarily on accounts provided by witnesses and organisations operating in the region. Discrepancies also concern the location of the attacks. Some sources place them in Red Sea State, while others locate them near disputed border territories or in areas controlled by Egypt. The absence of verified coordinates makes it difficult to determine whether the strikes violated Sudanese territory whose sovereignty is not disputed.
On 12 October, the Egyptian Armed Forces announced that they were conducting another phase of operations against illegal gold mining in the Eastern Desert. The military presented its actions as measures to combat the unlawful exploitation of natural resources and protect Egypt’s sovereignty. However, the statement did not explicitly confirm responsibility for all the strikes reported on 10 October, nor did it provide findings concerning casualties. At the same time, Sudan’s Sovereignty Council, headed by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, ordered the establishment of a commission to investigate the circumstances of the incident.
As a result, a dispute emerged concerning responsibility for the use of force, the status of the border, and the permissibility of military operations against informal mining sites. Each of these issues also carries political significance, as Egypt remains one of the Sudanese Armed Forces’ most important regional partners.
The June Precedent. Fabricated Statements and Real Victims
The conflict over gold-mining sites has been ongoing for several months. On 16 June 2026, earlier airstrikes took place in the Jabal al-Uqaydat area and at nearby mining sites. The Egyptian investigative outlet Mada Masr conducted an investigation involving miners’ testimonies and interviews with representatives of the Egyptian administration. Two officials confirmed to journalists that military operations had been carried out against groups extracting gold without permits in areas Cairo considers its own territory. According to a medical source cited by the outlet, 23 people were killed. The findings indicated that some miners initially reported missing had been detained by Egyptian security services, contributing to inflated initial casualty estimates.
The June airstrikes also triggered a wave of information manipulation.
On 18 June, Beam Reports fact-checked a statement attributed to prominent Egyptian journalist Amr Adib. According to the circulated account, Adib had allegedly stated that the Egyptian military bombed Sudanese miners at the request of the authorities in Port Sudan. The same purported statement included an accusation that Al-Burhan had effectively turned Sudan into an Egyptian province. Beam Reports found no evidence that the journalist had actually made these remarks. They could not be located on Adib’s official profiles, in recordings of his television programme, or in other available publications. The fabricated statement was circulated by Facebook pages with substantial followings. Its political significance was clear. The accusation of an airstrike against civilians was combined with the suggestion that Sudan’s military authorities had themselves facilitated the attack through cooperation with Egypt.
On 22 June, Beam Reports identified another fabricated statement, this time attributed to the Governor of Northern State. According to the manipulative account, the governor had allegedly claimed that the miners killed in the airstrikes were not Sudanese citizens. Their appearance and dialect were cited as supposed evidence. In this case, too, verification failed to establish the authenticity of the statement.
The June manipulations targeted different aspects of the same event. The first attributed shared responsibility for the attack to the authorities in Port Sudan, while the second questioned the nationality of its victims. Both exploited genuine reports of violence by adding false statements attributed to public figures. The same mechanism reappeared in October. The fabricated statement attributed to Minawi was intended to influence the interpretation of another airstrike before the politician concerned had presented his official position.
TASIS. The Same Narrative Following Two Different Airstrikes
A further dimension of the information conflict emerges from a comparison of statements issued by the Sudan Founding Alliance (TASIS), a political-military coalition associated with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which have been at war with the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) since April 2023.
On 17 June 2026, TASIS spokesperson Ahmed Tugod Lisan accused Egypt of attacking Sudanese miners and portrayed Cairo’s actions as part of a broader pattern of exploiting Sudan’s natural resources. The statement included allegations concerning the flow of gold to Egypt, exploitation of land, access to water, and cooperation between Egyptian security institutions and the SAF. Sudan’s military authorities were portrayed as a political establishment enabling Egypt to pursue its interests.
On 11 October, following the latest airstrike, TASIS returned to almost identical arguments. It accused the Egyptian air force of killing more than 200 people, alleged that Egypt had violated Sudanese sovereignty, and again linked Cairo’s actions to economic interests and the political subordination of Sudanese authorities.
In both statements, TASIS portrays Egypt as a state exploiting the war to appropriate Sudan’s natural resources, and the SAF as an ally helping Egypt pursue those interests. It attributes responsibility for the miners’ deaths both to the Egyptian military and to the Sudanese authorities cooperating with it. This interpretation serves the political interests of TASIS, a coalition associated with the RSF, which is engaged in war against Al-Burhan’s forces. In its statement of 11 October, the alliance attributed the deaths of more than 200 people to the Egyptian air force, despite the fact that neither responsibility for the attack nor the number of fatalities had been independently confirmed. These accusations subsequently appeared in publications issued by the Ethiopian state news agency ENA. The agency presented Egypt’s responsibility as an established fact and linked the incident to allegations concerning Cairo’s interference in Sudanese affairs and competition over the Nile’s water resources. In this way, unverified accusations made by one party to the conflict were used to substantiate a broader narrative concerning Egypt’s regional policy.
Ethiopia. From Allegations of an Airstrike to a Narrative of Regional Domination
On 11 October, the Ethiopian News Agency (ENA), Ethiopia’s state news agency, published an article entitled “Egypt Kills over 200 Sudanese Miners”. Both the headline and the opening sentence unequivocally attributed the deaths of more than 200 Sudanese miners to the Egyptian air force. However, the original Sudan Tribune report relied on accounts from three survivors who accused Egypt of carrying out the airstrike. Both responsibility for the attack and the number of fatalities remained unverified. ENA omitted these qualifications, presenting the allegations as established facts. The article also cited the position of the Sudan Founding Alliance (TASIS), which accused Egypt of violating Sudanese sovereignty, seeking to appropriate its natural resources, and cooperating with the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) at the expense of the local population.
The publication was consistent with a narrative the Ethiopian agency had been developing even before the airstrike. On 9 October, ENA published an article entitled “Egypt’s Sabotage and Plots Against Ethiopia and the Wider Horn of Africa”, accusing Egypt of destabilising countries in the region and restricting Ethiopia’s influence. The following day, an interview appeared with Abdulshakur Abdulsamad, a researcher at the Center for Strategic Studies and Regional Integration Initiative, who argued that Cairo had an interest in prolonging the war in Sudan. According to him, Sudan’s weakened condition as a result of the conflict prevents it from fully utilising its water resources, thereby benefiting Egypt. The researcher linked this situation to the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), whose operation could support the development of Sudanese agriculture and increase the country’s consumption of Nile waters.
On 12 October, ENA used the same statement in an article entitled “Egypt Exacerbating Sudan’s Civil War with Recent Massacre of Over 200 Civilians”, linking earlier allegations concerning Egyptian water policy to accusations about the bombing of the mines. It also cited the position of the Sudanese civilian coalition Somoud, which held the Egyptian military responsible for the airstrikes, criticised the authorities associated with the SAF, and demanded an independent investigation.
Over the course of four days, the Ethiopian state news agency developed a narrative of Egyptian interference in neighbouring countries’ affairs, using reports of the airstrike against Sudanese miners to reinforce it. The manipulation consisted of presenting unconfirmed responsibility for the attack and an unverified casualty figure as facts, and subsequently linking the tragedy, as portrayed in that manner, to allegations that Egypt was deliberately prolonging the war in Sudan. The incident was used to reinforce the Ethiopian narrative concerning Egypt’s regional policy, encompassing the dispute over Nile water resources, Cairo’s military cooperation with Sudan, Somalia and Eritrea, and competition for influence in the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea basin.
Foreign Influence Networks Exploit Existing Disputes
The exploitation of Egyptian–Sudanese tensions for manipulative purposes has other precedents. On 4 June, Beam Reports published an analysis of accounts operating within the Ethiopian information environment that disseminated manipulated content concerning the war in Sudan. One documented case involved the reuse of footage showing Egyptian soldiers captured by the RSF at the Merowe military base in April 2023. The footage was circulated in 2026 as supposedly current evidence of Egyptian involvement in the war on the side of the SAF.
Researchers also documented the activities of the “Ethiopia Now” page, reportedly administered from Ethiopia and Saudi Arabia. The profile regularly published older statements by RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, presenting them in a manner suggesting that they were current. The publications also addressed the Halaib and Shalateen Triangle, Egyptian military support for the SAF, and the dispute over GERD. Content relating to different events and periods was combined into an interpretation portraying Egypt as a significant participant in Sudan’s war and the wider regional rivalry. Beam Reports also described the dissemination of a fabricated statement attributed to the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which was intended to undermine allegations that Ethiopian territory was being used for armed operations against Sudan.
Earlier findings demonstrate the use of specific manipulation techniques, including presenting archival materials as current, falsifying institutional statements, and combining separate events into a single political narrative. It has not been established that these accounts participated in disseminating the October allegations. Nevertheless, the documented mechanisms indicate that the conflict involving Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia was being exploited for information purposes before the latest airstrike.
The Killing of Egyptian Drivers. Violence Crosses Another Border
On 12 October, two days after the airstrikes on the mines, two Egyptian nationals were killed in southern Khartoum. A third Egyptian was injured. The attacker opened fire on truck drivers near a local market. Egypt’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed the incident, and the Egyptian ambassador contacted the Sudanese authorities. The Sudanese side announced that a suspect had been detained.
According to Mada Masr’s findings, based on interviews with representatives of Sudanese security services and a witness to the incident, the attacker was reportedly wearing a uniform bearing the insignia of formations cooperating with the SAF. A source involved in the investigation told the outlet that, during preliminary questioning, the detained individual explained the attack as an attempt to avenge his brother, who had allegedly been killed in the bombing of the gold mines. The killing of Egyptian nationals deepened the crisis in relations between the two countries and increased the risk that mutual accusations would be extended to entire communities. The attacker’s alleged affiliation with a formation cooperating with the army created an additional problem for the authorities in Port Sudan, as it raised the possibility that the Sudanese military command could also be held responsible for his actions.
For this reason, Minni Minawi’s position of 14 October takes on additional significance. The Governor of Darfur demanded that the facts be disclosed while opposing generalised accusations and narratives that could deepen hostility between the two societies.
Cairo and Port Sudan Seek to Contain Escalation
Following the killing of the Egyptian drivers and mounting criticism of the airstrikes, the Egyptian and Sudanese authorities initiated discussions on border security. On 14 October, Mada Masr reported that both countries were considering a new cooperation mechanism involving intelligence sharing between security services, incident-reporting procedures, and joint monitoring of border areas. According to the outlet’s sources, the Egyptian side was also examining the possibility of establishing a joint security presence with the Sudanese army. This did not, however, mean that an agreement had been concluded or that the final scope of future activities had been determined.
On 14 October, the Russian state-owned outlet RT Arabic published an extensive report on Minni Minawi’s meeting with Egyptian diplomats in Port Sudan. The editorial coverage emphasised calls to prevent escalation, await the findings of the investigation, and preserve relations between the two countries. It also cited declarations by Egyptian representatives concerning clarification of the circumstances of the airstrikes and condolences conveyed to the victims’ families. Particular attention was devoted to Minawi’s appeal to stop disseminating unverified information, inciting hostility between Sudanese and Egyptians, and attributing responsibility to entire communities and armed formations.
The conciliatory tone adopted by Russia’s RT Arabic has a significant geopolitical context. Moscow maintains close relations with Egypt while simultaneously expanding cooperation with Sudan’s military authorities. In September 2026, Vladimir Putin met with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi during the BRICS summit in New Delhi. Their discussions addressed, among other matters, the development of economic cooperation, construction of the El Dabaa nuclear power plant, and the Russian industrial zone in the Suez Canal area. Russia is also seeking to establish a logistical support facility for its navy in Port Sudan, which requires maintaining relations with the authorities associated with General Al-Burhan. A conflict between Cairo and Port Sudan could complicate the pursuit of Russian interests in the Red Sea region.
RT Arabic’s publications from 12–14 October provide insight into how the outlet portrayed the developing crisis. Following initial reports of numerous casualties from the airstrikes, the editorial team published the Egyptian position on combating illegal gold mining and subsequently shifted its focus to diplomatic activities. On 13 October, it cited a statement by Amjad Farid, an adviser to Al-Burhan, who warned against exploiting the tragedy to incite hostility towards Egypt. Farid suggested that growing polarisation could be intended to undermine Egyptian support for the SAF in its war against the RSF. The following day, RT Arabic highlighted a similar appeal by Minni Minawi for restraint and clarification of the circumstances surrounding the airstrikes.
This selection of statements aligns with Moscow’s interest in maintaining cooperation between Egypt and the Sudanese military command. Particularly noteworthy is the contrast between this approach and the coverage provided by Ethiopia’s ENA, which used the airstrikes to reinforce accusations of Egyptian interference and regional domination. The Russian outlet, by contrast, amplified the voices of Sudanese officials opposing an escalation of the conflict with Cairo. The available publications indicate a selection of information consistent with Russia’s strategic interests, although they do not establish whether this resulted from directives issued to the editorial team.
Sudanese Gold in International Economic and Information Competition
Gold is one of the most important sources of financing for the war that has been ongoing in Sudan since 2023. According to findings by Chatham House, revenues from the extraction and trade of this commodity support economic structures associated with both the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). A substantial proportion of the gold is exported through intermediary networks, primarily to the United Arab Emirates, but also to Egypt. Informal mining and smuggling make it difficult to establish the actual scale of production and financial flows. At the same time, for thousands of Sudanese who have been deprived of other employment opportunities by the war, work in makeshift mines remains their primary source of income. Along the Sudan–Egypt border, economic interests intersect with security concerns and unresolved territorial disputes. Egypt seeks to control mining activities and smuggling, while Sudan’s military authorities attempt to preserve revenues from the gold sector and their strategic cooperation with Cairo. The airstrikes on the mines place this cooperation under pressure, particularly when Sudanese civilians are among the victims. Al-Burhan’s opponents exploit such incidents to accuse his authorities of subordination to Egyptian interests. The dispute over miners’ safety thus becomes part of the competition over the political credibility of Sudan’s military leadership.
The international nature of Sudanese gold trading also gives the conflict a European dimension. On 13 July 2026, the Council of the European Union tightened sanctions against Sudan, extending them to the purchase, import and transfer of gold originating from the country, as well as the supply of chemicals used in mining. The restrictions are intended to impede the financing of the war, but their effectiveness depends to a considerable extent on verifying the origin of the commodity, which may enter international markets through third countries. The importance of Egypt and the UAE in the regional gold trade means that actions undertaken along the Sudanese border have consequences extending beyond bilateral relations.
Competition for control over extraction is also reflected in information activities. Revenues from gold trading, foreign economic interests and military cooperation provide arguments used to accuse participants in the conflict of exploiting Sudan. Earlier research into Sudan’s information environment identified networks employing fake accounts, archival materials presented as current, and coordinated dissemination of narratives. The October airstrikes became another issue exploited in this competition. Accusations against Egypt and the SAF entered foreign media outlets, where they were linked to broader regional disputes. The findings to date make it possible to identify specific cases of manipulation and narrative transfer, although they do not confirm the existence of a single coordinated operation encompassing all the activities described.
Analytical Assessment. Foreign Interests and Information Manipulation
The airstrikes on Sudanese gold mines became the subject of information influence activities by two countries pursuing different interests in the region. Ethiopia’s ENA used the tragedy to reinforce accusations of Egyptian interference in Sudanese affairs, placing them within the context of Addis Ababa’s rivalry with Cairo over Nile waters and influence in the Horn of Africa. Russia’s RT Arabic, meanwhile, concentrated on diplomatic efforts and appeals for de-escalation. Moscow has an interest in maintaining good relations with both Egypt and Sudan’s military authorities. Cooperation between these parties is significant for Russian economic interests and plans to secure access to port infrastructure on the Red Sea.
A comparison of ENA’s publications with the original Sudan Tribune reporting revealed manipulation involving the presentation of unverified allegations as established facts. In the case of RT Arabic, a different mechanism is evident. In its coverage of the events of 13 and 14 October, the Russian outlet selectively emphasised Egyptian justifications for border operations and statements by Sudanese politicians warning against an escalation of the conflict. The selection of these statements favoured the preservation of cooperation between Cairo and the authorities in Port Sudan, in line with Russia’s strategic interests. In both cases, the manner in which the events were reported corresponded to the political interests of the states from which the respective media outlets originated.
Tariq Al-Mansoor – Shaffafiya
