- Thirteen artisanal miners, including women and three children, were killed in southwest Mali on Wednesday after a tunnel in which they were digging for gold flooded, the national union of gold counters and refineries (UCROM) said on Saturday.
The incident occurred at an open-pit gold mine near the village of Danga in the Kangaba Cercle in Mali’s southwestern Koulikoro region, UCROM Secretary General Taoule Camara said via telephone.
The sluice gates of a muddy water reservoir broke and spilled into a tunnel in which women and children were digging out earth to search for leftover gold particles.
“It is serious. There were a lot of women. We spent all day yesterday clearing away the water to start looking for the bodies,” Camara said earlier this week, when a death toll was still unavailable.
Artisanal mining is a common activity across much of West Africa and has become more lucrative in recent years due to growing demand for metals and rising prices.
