March 22, 2015 (Mining) — Ethiopian jets have bombed the Bisha gold mine in Eritrea, that is majority-owned by Vancouver-based mining company Nevsun Resources (NYSE:NSU, TSX:NSU), according to media reports from the East African region on Saturday.
Tigrai Online, an Ethiopian daily news site, confirmed an earlier report from a Sudanese newspaper, Al-Sahafa, that the Ethiopian air force dropped bombs on the Bisha gold mine, located 150 kilometres west of Asmara, along with the Eritrean military depot at Mai Edaga. The bombing campaigns reportedly took place on Friday in two separate attacks.
“The Bisha gold mine … is on fire and a huge fire and smoke can be seen from far away,” according to Tigrai Online.
Another media outlet, Salinna.com, said “the attack is believed to have been carried out either by missile or sabotage by opponents of the regime.” Eritrea is widely considered to be a state sponsor of terrorism, including planned attacks on its neighbours. The tiny Red Sea State won independence from Ethiopia in 1993 but has frequently skirmished with Somalia and Ethiopia since then. In 2012 the U.S. Treasury Department placed sanctions on several Eritrean government officials and frozen their assets for supporting al-Shabaab, Al-Qaeda’s branch in Somalia.
The Bisha mine is 60-percent owned by Nevsun and 40 percent by the government of Eritrea. Bisha is a high-grade VMS deposit configured in three distinct zones – a gold-silver oxide zone, a copper-enriched zone, and a sulphide zone containing zinc and copper, Nevsun describes on its website.
The extent of the damage to the mine could not be confirmed at the time of writing. The most recent operational update details a temporary shutdown at the processing plant due to a mechanical issue with the ball mill. The problem was expected to take two weeks to resolve but was not expected to impact 2015 production guidance.
Source: Mining
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