The incident occurred in the Municipality of El Callao. Officials assured that the place was flooded by the rains and that it had been closed for a long time.
At least twelve people died after the collapse of a gold mine in the Municipality of El Callao, in the southeast of Venezuela, as a result of the intense rains that fell in the region. The secretary of Citizen Security of the state of Bolívar, General Edgar Colina Reyes, stated that the Talavera mine “was closed a long time ago.”
Although the incident occurred on Wednesday, it was not until Friday that they were able to rescue the first five victims. This Saturday, meanwhile, they extracted another seven lifeless bodies. All were transferred to the morgue of the Juan Germán Roscio hospital for identification and subsequent delivery to their respective relatives.
“Due to heavy rainfall that occurred in the Municipality, artisanal miners who were there working, died of respiratory failure. We have a total of 12 deaths,” confirmed Colina Reyes in an official video posted on Twitter.
In a video previously broadcast on the same network, the official assured that they were foreign miners, although he did not specify the places of origin or the number of workers who were in the excavation when the mine collapsed.
He asserted that the lack of experience could have influenced the tragedy since “when it is raining there are mines that cannot be worked.” According to local media, around a hundred workers managed to get out of the mine alive.
For its part, the Mayor’s Office of El Callao reported on its Instagram account that “under the guidelines of Mayor Coromoto Lugo, the Public Services department moved to the municipal cemetery to proceed open mass graves and thus bury the victims who lost their lives in the La Talavera mine.”
In 2021, the collapse of a gallery in a mine in the same area caused one death, while 34 people could be rescued.
The Gold exploitations, legal and illegal, abound in the south of the country. Miners frequently work in difficult conditions and accidents are common. Large areas of this region are prey to armed criminal gangs.
El Callao, specifically, is a town whose life revolves around the extraction of gold. Most of its more than 30,000 inhabitants participate directly or indirectly in this activity.
27 workers died in the fire of a gold mine in Peru
Another tragic episode happened in southern Peru at the beginning of May, when at least 27 workers died in a fire at a gold mine that operated in a remote area of the Arequipa region.
A short circuit it would have caused the fire in the mine shaft of La Esperanza 1, in the province of Condesuyos, according to members of the Police and the Prosecutor’s Office present at the scene.
“The information we have from the police station (is that there are) 27 deaths inside the mine,” prosecutor Giovanni Matos told television channel N.
The mine owner, Esteban Rey Huamaní, was the one who went to the Tanaquihua police station, located an hour and a half away, to request help.
“As soon as the fatal accident occurred, personnel from the mining company were mobilized; Later, at approximately 12:45 p.m., when the event was reported to the local authorities, personnel from the Yanaquihua health center, located some 500 meters from the mine entrance, went to the place to treat the people who had been injured, including they, three rescuers”, reported the Regional Government of Arequipa.
With information from agencies.
IS
