As the number of casualties from an accident in an illegal gold mine increased to 15, Surinamese authorities announced two days of national mourning on Wednesday.
President Chan Santokhi told the National Assembly at the time that the collapse happened on Monday at a mine where workers had been “looking for gold in a sort of improvised tunnel of considerable depth.
According to residents, 20 to 30 miners were working in a hole they had excavated themselves, located at the Rosebel Gold Mines which are operated by a subsidiary of the Chinese company Zijin Mining.
The mine is in the Brokopond district, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) south of the capital Paramaribo.
Rescue teams in Suriname are still looking for potential survivors, but they are having trouble because of the unstable terrain and worries about more collapses. Previously, there had been 14.
In a statement on Tuesday, Rosebel Gold Mines expressed regret for the fatalities but also mentioned that it had requested last month’s eviction of the undocumented workers from their homes.
These kinds of mishaps are frequent in illicit mining activities, which are widespread in several northern South American nations.
