At least 30 people have been killed after an artisanal gold mine collapsed in western Central African Republic near the border with Cameroon, officials said on Wednesday.

Cameroonian media reported that the incident occurred on Tuesday in the village of Zamboye, a few kilometers from Garoua-Boulai, a town in eastern Cameroon.

Souleymane Bi, deputy mayor of Nana-Mambere prefecture in the Central African Republic, said that rescuers and residents pulled 30 bodies from the collapsed mine over several hours, and that injured miners were receiving treatment.

“It is horrible and we are calling for help from organizations and all people of goodwill to help,” Bi said. A local civil servant told AFP that about 40 people died at the site.

“At this stage it’s difficult for us to establish a formal toll,” Baboua local official Laurent Ngon Baba told AFP. Cedric Mbango, a miner at the site, described the incident as “catastrophic.”

“The ground completely collapsed and buried people. As I speak to you, other people are still buried. Rescue attempts are under way,” he told AFP.

Government spokesman Evariste Ngamana expressed sympathy for the families of the victims and said authorities are “working hard to provide relief and assistance” to those affected.

Artisanal mine collapses are common in the Central African Republic, where several thousand people work in small-scale extraction mining outside government control. The work is risky because miners typically do not have enough protection and accidents are often deadly.

In June, a collapse killed dozens of people at the Be-Mbari gold mining site, also on the Cameroon border. In mid-March, a landslide killed seven people at a mine in the village of Ngourroum, in the west of the Central African Republic. Another 20 were killed in February in Gordi, in the northeast.

Source: www.aljazeera.com