No fewer than seven people have been reported dead and five others injured after a landslide at an illegal gold mine in Indonesia buried an estimated 20 people, officials have confirmed.
The victims were mining gold on a bare hillside when the landslide triggered by heavy rain struck the area on the west of Borneo island, in West Kalimantan province.
Local police said they had managed to identify four of the recovered bodies and the search for other victims continues with help from local people and the victims’ families.
Read Also: Five Pilgrims Die Following Landslide At Iraq Muslim Shrine
Unlicensed mines are common across the mineral-rich Southeast Asian archipelago where abandoned sites attract locals who scrounge for leftover gold ore without using proper safety equipment.
Mining accidents occur frequently in Indonesia due to landslides, especially during monsoons.
Last Sunday, rescue workers searched through the rubble of a Shiite Muslim shrine in central Iraq, following a landslide that left at least five people dead including a child.
‘Almost 48 hours of digging through collapsed rocks, wood, and other debris, we have found five bodies,’ civil defence General Abdelrahman Jawdat told reporters.
‘That could be the final toll,’ he further added while digging has also continued to search for other victims.
It is the latest tragedy to befall oil-rich but poverty-stricken Iraq, which is trying to move past decades of war but is hobbled by political paralysis, endemic corruption and other challenges.
Civil defence spokesman Nawas Sabah Shaker said earlier that between six and eight pilgrims had been reported trapped under the debris of the shrine, known as Qattarat al-Imam Ali, near the city of Karbala.
Africa Today News, New York reports that rescuers drove a bulldozer through the shrine’s entrance, which resembles half a dome ornately decorated with blue tiles covered in Arabic script.
The sacred building, flanked by two minarets, sits at the base of high, bare rock walls. Part of its concrete roof had been torn apart.
Jawdat said rescuers had recovered the bodies of two women, a man and a child, and were working to free the corpse of the fifth victim, another woman whom they had located.