Aton Resources announced that it has completed its recent diamond drilling program at Hamama, located in the Abu Marawat Concession in the Eastern Desert of Egypt.

The diamond program included the drilling of a total of 1,612.7 meters from 42 shallow holes.

The company said that the program was designed to test for potential oxide mineralization in areas that previously had been largely undrilled.

According to the results, 22 holes including 0.82 g/t Au, 47.39 g/t Ag, 1.38 g/t Au equivalent (“AuEq”), and 8.20% Zn over an interval of 22.5m from the surface (HAD-022) in addition to 0.60 g/t Au, 43.49 g/t Ag, 1.11 g/t AuEq and 3.25% Zn over an interval of 22.7m from 0.45m downhole depth (HAD-021), associated with the main Hamama silica-carbonate mineralized horizon.

Additionally, five holes were drilled at Hamama Central, which returned mineralized intersections including 1.20 g/t Au, 15.17 g/t Ag, and 1.38 g/t AuEq over an interval of 15.9m from 11.0m downhole depth (HAD-017) also associated with the highly gossanous Hamama silica-carbonate mineralized horizon.

Commenting on these results, Aton’s CEO, Tonno Vahk said “We are pleased to be able to announce this year’s diamond drill results from Hamama East and Central. We have not drill tested the oxide potential in these areas previously, and we are surely happy with these results that confirm reasonable thicknesses of oxide gold-silver mineralization, as indicated by our previous surface channel sampling and trenching, in these areas.”

“The grades we are seeing are very much in line with the Hamama West oxide resource, and these newly delineated areas will again be readily amenable to exceedingly low strip ratio open pit mining methods. These results are particularly encouraging, when combined with the recent metallurgical test results from the Rodruin oxides, and we are now considering different potential processing scenarios for the oxide mineralization at both Hamama West and Rodruin including the potential use of modular CIL technology,” he added.