Rescue teams were still pulling bodies from a collapsed gold mine in western Central African Republic on Thursday, three days after a network of hand-dug tunnels caved in on the miners working inside, killing more than 100 people in one of the deadliest mining disasters the country has recorded.
The collapse struck Tuesday at an artisanal mining site in Zamboye, a village in Nana-Mambéré prefecture about 50 kilometers from the town of Baboua, near the border with Cameroon. The Baboua public prosecutor opened a judicial inquiry and said the disaster resulted from the collapse of several underground tunnels where miners had been digging without reinforcement. More than 10 additional bodies were recovered on Thursday morning alone, and officials said the final toll is likely to keep rising, with an unknown number of people still trapped or missing.
Victims include miners from both the Central African Republic and neighboring Cameroon; Cameroon's government said at least four of its citizens were confirmed among the dead and dispatched a team to the border area to assist. Local Red Cross volunteer Bertrand Be Yangue, who has been coordinating recovery efforts, said the odds for anyone still buried were vanishingly small: "Finding them alive would be a miracle."
An industry with almost no safety net
Collapses like the one at Zamboye are a recurring hazard in Central African Republic's artisanal mining sector, which employs thousands of people digging gold and diamonds by hand with little equipment and almost no government oversight. Pits are often carved several meters into loose ground without shoring or reinforcement, and rescue services lack the machinery to respond quickly when tunnels give way. Similar collapses killed dozens of miners near Be-Mbari in June and claimed more lives in February and March, according to local reporting on the recovery effort, underscoring how routine such disasters have become even as the death tolls draw little sustained international attention.
A 2025 United Nations report had already flagged Zamboye specifically, documenting illicit mining there involving armed groups and describing extraction methods that put workers at serious risk. Mines Minister Rufin Benam Beltoungou offered condolences to victims' families and cautioned miners about the dangers of unregulated digging, but stopped short of announcing new enforcement measures or a broader safety crackdown on the informal sites that supply much of the country's gold exports.
On the ground, workers said the response has been improvised and under-resourced. One miner told reporters the rescue effort was "being organized, but it is not up to the task," a sentiment echoed by aid volunteers who say they lack basic equipment such as heavy lifting gear and structural supports to safely reach anyone still alive beneath the rubble. With the search expected to continue for days, families in Zamboye and across the border in Cameroon were still waiting Thursday for word on relatives who have not been accounted for.
