Collapse at illegal gold mine kills 14 in Colombia

A landslide in an illegal gold mine left 14 dead and seven injured in Colombia, in an area of ​​the southwest of the country controlled by armed groups, authorities announced on Monday.

Illegal mining is one of the main sources of financing for criminal groups present in Nariño, a region bordering Ecuador. “There are 14 dead,” Alex Gonzalez, the department’s secretary of peace and security, told the Caracol channel. Search operations have stopped, he added.

Videos circulating on social media show people and an excavator extracting bodies from the mine, amid rubble and mud.

Frequent accidents

According to the Nariño government, rescue teams had difficulty accessing the accident site due to the difficult terrain and the presence of criminal groups, which finance themselves through drug trafficking, extortion and illegal mining. “Communities have no economic alternatives to these extremely risky activities. Small artisanal mining operations have practically disappeared,” said a regional government source.

Already in August, a mining accident in Nariño left 13 people dead. These accidents are common in Colombia, especially in illegal sites lacking safety controls. Illegal gold mining is a very lucrative activity, which even supplants cocaine production in this conflict zone, according to local authorities.