30 gold miners killed in Burkina Faso
Sunday, 10 August 2008 17:04
More than 30 illegal gold miners have been killed and more are missing after a mine collapsed in Burkina Faso after heavy rain.
The miners were working at a site near the village of Boussoukoula, when the mine walls collapsed yesterday.
Witnesses had reported at least 50 people had been working in the mine, roughly 500km southwest of the capital Ouagadougou near the border with Ivory Coast, just before the collapse.
So far 34 bodies had been recovered.
The miners were working despite a government order published in June banning artisanal mining until the end of September to avoid such deadly accidents, which have happened during previous rainy seasons.
Yesterday's toll was one of the country's worst ever.
Low world gold prices killed off commercial gold mining in Burkina Faso in the late 1990s, but higher prices in recent years have drawn back commercial miners as well as large numbers of artisanal miners hoping to dig their way out of poverty.
Nearly half the former French colony's 15 million people live below the poverty line.
Foreign gold miners have opened three new commercial gold mines in the past year in Burkina Faso, which lies sandwiched between Africa's second and third biggest gold miners, Ghana and Mali.
The government has said it hopes to raise gold output to 15-20 tonnes per year by 2009 as more mines come into production.