BOUAR(National Times)- A landslide at an illegal gold mine has killed at least 100 people in the Central African Republic on the border with Cameroon, the latest of many such accidents in the mineral-rich nation.
Search operations are still underway after the accident at the Zamboye mining site, about 50 kilometres (31 miles) from the Central African town of Baboua, on Tuesday afternoon.
Video images shared on social media showed part of the ground at the huge open-pit mining site, where hundreds of artisanal miners work, breaking away and burying people in its path.
Several local sources said that around 100 people had died and many others were injured, prompting condemnation from opposition leaders in both countries about artisanal mining conditions.
“The ground completely collapsed and buried people,” Cedric Mbango, a miner at the site, told AFP, describing the incident as “catastrophic”.
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 elected official Laurent Ngon Baba told AFP early on Wednesday.
At least four of the victims were Cameroonian, the Cameroon Tribune reported.
Survivors were taken to hospital in Baboua, while the search continued on Wednesday.
Landslides are common in illegal operations outside state control in the Central African Republic.
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”.
Rich from ‘illegal exploitation’
Martin Ziguele, president of the Movement for the Liberation of the Centrafrican People, said “the government bears direct responsibility for the occurrence of these tragedies”.
Cameroonian opposition leader Maurice Kamto said the accident revealed “the inhumanity of those who grow rich from the illegal exploitation of minerals”.
“They show absolutely no concern for the conditions in which compatriots, driven by destitution, work at unregulated mining sites, without the slightest safety measures,” said Kamto, a high-profile critic of Cameroonian President Paul Biya who came second to the president in the 2018 election.
Cameroon, which is banking on the exploitation of its mineral resources, notably iron, diamonds, gold, bauxite and cobalt, to develop its economy, adopted a new mining code in 2023.
Last month, the Cameroonian government announced the strengthening of controls in the gold sector after a significant discrepancy was discovered between gold exports declared by customs and imports declared by importing countries, notably the United Arab Emirates.
The government says that more than 200 companies are carrying out mining activities in Cameroon without a permit or authorisation.
In June, a similar collapse killed several dozen at the Be-Mbari gold mining site, also on the Central African Republic-Cameroon border.
In mid-March, a landslide killed seven people at a mine in the village of Ngourroum, also in the west of the Central African Republic.
Another 20 were killed in February in Gordi, in the northeast.
“Although artisanal mining in the Central African Republic is regulated, many miners and traders operate without mining permits in unauthorised areas or bypass official trade channels,” Aicha Pemboura, a researcher at the Central Africa Observatory on Organised Crime and Violence Project, wrote in an article in March.
