KABUL, AFGHANISTAN – At least three miners have been killed in a landslide near a gold mine in Badakhshan province, northeastern Afghanistan, according to local Taliban authorities.
The head of the Taliban Information and Culture Department in Badakhshan, Hekmatullah Mohammadi, said the incident occurred in Khwahan district on Thursday, September 19.
According to the local Taliban authority, the victims were residents of Khwahan district who were working in a gold mine on a hillside when the landslide occurred, resulting in the deaths of three of them.
This is not the first deadly incident in Badakhshan’s gold mines. Numerous similar incidents have occurred in the province, primarily involving gold mine collapses that have claimed the lives of dozens of miners in the past.
In 2019, at least 30 gold miners were killed and several others injured when a gold mine collapsed in the Kohistan district of the province.
Badakhshan has the largest gold-bearing quartz vein system in the country. The lack of safety measures, unskilled miners, the absence of essential machinery, and the use of traditional and outdated extraction methods often result in the deaths of mine workers in impoverished Afghanistan.
On the other hand, landslides are common in the remote, mountainous regions of the country, often caused by heavy rain and snow.
Earlier this year, at least 25 people, including women and children, were killed and dozens of others injured in a landslide caused by heavy snowfall in eastern Nuristan province.
Similarly, in 2014, at least 2,100 people were killed and hundreds more injured in two consecutive landslides in the mountainous Argo district of Badakhshan.
