Shield Mining (ASX: SHX) has commenced drilling at the Diaguili copper prospect and also discovered significant gold-in-soil anomalies at the Yowgui prospect within its 60% owned Saboussiri project in southern Mauritania, West Africa.
The 3 hole/760m RC percussion drilling programme to test the VTEM anomaly is now underway.
This is expected to be completed by mid May with results available in early June.
In addition, the company has reported a number of gold-in-soil anomalies at the Saboussiri project (Permits 236B2 and 879B2).
In March 2010, the company carried out 40m x 40m soil sampling over the Diaguili copper prospect as an aid in drill targeting the VTEM geophysical anomaly there.
As an adjunct to that programme 40m x 40m spaced soil sampling was also carried out on small grids each of approximately 200m x 200m over drainage and rock chip gold anomalies delineated in earlier programmes.
All multi-element results have now been received and show that there are significant gold anomalies on three of the outlying grids at Yowgui.
There are a number of +100ppb Au values (max 362ppb) delineating coherent and robust anomalies but which are open ended on these three small adjacent grids.
The company said the soil sampling programme at sample spacings of 40m x 80m will now be extended to cover the area of interest (approximately 2kms x 1km) and connect the three individual grids.