About 50 people are feared dead after an artisan gold mine flooded in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) after torrential rains.
The cave-in occurred on the Detroit mine site at around 3 pm local time on Friday following heavy rainfall as per a public statement issued by Emiliane Itongwa, president of the Initiative of Support and Social Supervision of Women.
“Several miners were in the shaft, which was covered and no one could get out. We are talking about 50 young people,” Itongwa said.
Detroit mine is located in the town of Kamituga, in South Kivu province, about 270 kilometres (170 miles) southwest of the regional capital Bukavu.
The mine was on a concession held by Kamituga mining, a subsidiary of Canadian gold mining company Banro, Raoul Kitungano, of the Congolese campaign group Justice Pour Tous (Justice for All), told AFP.
Rescue operations have begun as first bodies of the accident have been recovered. Torrential rain had flooded a river close to the mine according to eye witnesses.
For a second day running, hundreds of people gathered at the site as emergency workers brought the first bodies out and into nearby tents, video footage viewed by AFP showed.
While the emergency workers were working with shovels and their bare hands on Saturday, by Sunday a hydraulic shovel had been brought to the site to help them with their work.
According to a local resident at the scene, Jean Nondo, “a total of 18 bodies have been recovered to nearby mining town Kamituga. When people wanted to get out, there was no way to because the water was pouring in at a great pressure”.
Kamituga mayor Alexandre Bundya said he did not know how many miners were working at the time of the flooding, but that 19 families were searching for missing loved ones.
President Felix Tshisekedi said he was “deeply saddened” and asked the government to “take strong measures so that such tragedies are not repeated”.
Accidents of this kind are not uncommon in the unregulated artisanal mines in Congo. Dozens of deaths are recorded every year in mines where often ill-equipped diggers burrow deep underground in search for ore.
In October 2019, a landslide at a disused gold mine claimed 16 lives, while in June the same year, at least 39 men died when a copper mine in Kolwezi, in the south-eastern Katanga region, partially collapsed.
Congo has huge reserves of gold, cobalt, copper and coltan. It is the world’s largest producer of cobalt, crucial for making the batteries used in mobile phones and electric vehicles.
