At least 48 people were killed in the collapse of an illegally operated gold mine in western Mali on Saturday, authorities and local sources told Agence France-Presse.
Mali is one of Africa’s leading gold producers, and mining sites are regularly the scene of deadly landslides and accidents.
Authorities have struggled to control unregulated mining of the precious metal in the country, which is among the world’s poorest.
“The death toll is 48 following the landslide,” a local police source said. The victims are mainly young women, including one who was carrying her child on her back.
Boubacar Keita, from the Kenieba gold prospectors’ association, also counts at least 48 deaths.
“It is an illegal site. There is a lot of complicity in the exploitation of this type of site in the region,” the head of a local environmental organization told AFP, adding that the search for victims was ongoing.
Saturday’s accident took place at an abandoned site formerly operated by a Chinese company, sources told AFP.
In January, a landslide at a gold mine in southern Mali killed at least 10 people and left many others missing, most of them women.
Just over a year ago, a tunnel collapsed at a gold mining site in the same region as Saturday’s landslide, killing more than 70 people.