LIMA: At least seven workers at a small gold mine in southern Peru have died in what is believed to be an accident, local police reported yesterday.
The victims’ bodies were discovered 1.5km deep in the mine with injuries to their extremities, local police chief Enrique Felipe Monroy told radio station RPP.
Monroy said that initial evidence pointed to a collapse in the mine, in the town of La Rinconada. In the region, hundreds of small mines operate, many of them without proper legal permissions.
In Peru, the world’s second-largest copper producer and seventh-largest gold producer, collapses or accidents are frequent at informal or illegal mines, where workers dig out ore without following safety or environmental regulations.