KUNDUZ -- At least 30 Afghans were killed and seven others were injured after an illegal gold mine collapsed in Kohistan District, Badakhshan Province, Sunday (January 7), officials said.
Villagers had dug a 60-metre deep shaft in a riverbed to search for gold. They were inside when the walls fell in.
"The people were using an excavator to dig a big hole in the river when it collapsed, trapping dozens of workers," district governor Mohammad Rustam Raghi told AFP.
It was not clear why the shaft collapsed, but according to the provincial governor's spokesman Naik Muhammad Nazari, the miners were not professionals.
The Defence Ministry sent helicopters to deliver cash to the families of victims and to airlift survivors to hospitals, said Hashmat Bahaduri, the spokesman for the National Disaster Management Authority.
Bahaduri confirmed the casualty toll but warned the figures could change.
Well! Looting public wealth has such inevitable consequences. For, all people of Afghanistan have shares in the country's public wealth. There has been no rule of law and no accountability since the day this government of the so-called Mujahedin came to power in our oppressed and desperate country. As a result, one can do whatever one wants. I tell them that this number of 30 people who died and are buried under dirt is not enough. They would realize their wrong doing only after 500 of them are dead.
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