operating facility
in Zambia
Reporting the accident here, ZNBC state radio quoted a spokesman for Chambishi Metals plc – the owners of the property – as saying that eight bodies had been recovered, and that it was not known if more miners had been trapped in the collapse.
Illegal mining is widespread in Zambia – Africa’s top copper producer – where illegal miners try to reclaim copper waste from abandoned dump sites.
Last week in South Africa at least 82 illegal miners were killed in an underground fire at a disused Harmony mine in the Free State. The miners died at Eland shaft near the town of Welkom, in a part of the mine that runs to depths of up to 1.4 km.
Subsequently Harmony – the third-largest gold producer in South Africa –suspended 122 workers on suspicion of helping miners at a disused mine.
