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At least 100 dead in gold mine collapse in Central African Republic
Relief volunteer says 100 bodies recovered as miners remain missing and trapped under rubble at the Zamboye site.
More than 100 people have been killed after an artisanal gold mine collapsed in western Central African Republic (CAR) near the border with Cameroon, local sources and a Red Cross volunteer have said.
Local media reported that the cave-in occurred on Tuesday in the village of Zamboye, about 50km (31 miles) from the Central African town of Baboua and a few kilometres from Garoua-Boulai, in eastern Cameroon.
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Gervais Ganagoroh, a Red Cross volunteer involved in the relief effort, told the Associated Press news agency on Wednesday that more than 100 bodies had been recovered from the collapse.
A senior official at a local mining association also told Reuters that the cave-in had claimed more than 100 lives, a toll other local sources confirmed to the AFP.
The toll is expected to rise, with several people still missing or trapped beneath the rubble, according to city official Bertrand Be Yangue.
“Finding them alive would be a miracle,” Yangue said. “We are saddened and heartbroken to see young men and women perish after coming to the mines to save their families from despair.”
Souleymane Bi, the deputy mayor of Nana-Mambere prefecture in the Central African Republic, said: “It is horrible … And we are calling for help from organisations and all people of goodwill to help.”
The landslide is believed to have been caused by “the collapse of several underground tunnels in which miners were operating”, the Baboua public prosecutor said in a statement, announcing a judicial inquiry had been opened.
“At this stage, it’s difficult for us to establish a formal toll,” Baboua local official Laurent Ngon Baba told AFP earlier on Wednesday.
Cedric Mbango, a miner at the site, described the incident as “catastrophic”.
“The ground completely collapsed and buried people. As I speak to you, other people are still buried. Rescue attempts are under way,” he told AFP.
Government spokesman Evariste Ngamana expressed sympathy for the families of the victims and said authorities are “working hard to provide relief and assistance” to those affected.
Gregoire Mvongo, governor of the eastern Cameroonian region, said on public CRTV radio that they were “working in close collaboration with our Central African colleagues to deal with the aftermath of this tragedy”.
Artisanal mine collapses are common in CAR, where several thousand people work in small-scale extraction mining outside government control. The work is risky because miners typically do not have enough protection and accidents are often deadly.
In June, a collapse killed dozens of people at the Be-Mbari gold mining site, also on the Cameroon border.
In mid-March, a landslide killed seven people at a mine in the village of Ngourroum, in the west of CAR.
Another 20 were killed in February in Gordi, in the northeast.