Explosion at gold mine kills 59 in Burkina Faso
An explosion at a gold mine in Burkina Faso killed 59 people and injured more than 100 others Monday.
The explosion, near Gbomblora, about 240 miles southwest of the capital of Ouagadougou, is believed to have been caused by chemicals used in the mining and treating process that were stored in large quantities at the mine. The first blast occurred around 2 p.m. but several other blasts followed as workers tried to flee the scene.
“I saw bodies everywhere. It was horrible,” Sansan Kambou, a forest ranger who was at the site during the explosion, told The Associated Press by phone.
Burkina Faso is the fifth-largest gold producer in Africa, with about $2 billion dug up in 2019. About 1.5 million people, 7% of the population, work in gold production in the country.
However, gold from smaller mines, like the one in Monday’s incident, is often smuggled across the border into neighbors Togo, Benin, Niger and Ghana and has been linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State.
Gold mining in many African nations is lightly regulated and routinely dangerous.
In December 2021, at least 38 workers were killed when a mine collapsed in Sudan.
With News Wire Services
