Bamako: at least 48 people were killed in the collapse of a gold mine illegal in western Mali, the authorities and local sources have declared AFP.
Mali is one of the main African gold producers, and mining sites are regularly the scene of deadly and accident landslides.
The authorities have struggled to control the unregulated extraction of precious metal in the country, which is among the poorest in the world.
“The toll at 1800 today is 48 dead after collapse,” said a police source.
“Some victims fell into the water. Among them, a woman with her baby on her back.”
A local official confirmed the cave, while the Kenieba Gold Miners’ Association also passed the number of deaths to 48 years. The search for victims was underway, said the head of an environmental organization AFP.
Saturday’s accident took place on a site abandoned formerly operated by a Chinese company, said sources AFP.
In January, a landslide in a gold mine in southern Mali killed at least 10 people and left many other disappeared people, most of them.
A little over a year ago, a tunnel collapsed on a gold extraction site in the same region as the landslide on Saturday, killing more than 70 people.
