The collapse in a mine in El Callao, in eastern Venezuela, has so far left 12 dead, whose bodies were recovered, confirmed the Bolívar state Citizen Security authority.
The emergency occurred on Wednesday and several miners were trapped after the collapse due to heavy rainfall in that commune in the state of Bolívar, some 900 kilometers southeast of the capital, said Edgar Colina, the town’s Secretary of Citizen Security, in a video broadcast on Saturday in an official account of the agency on Twitter.
Search and rescue operations continued this day.
The craft workers who worked in the Talavera mine “died of respiratory failure,” added the official. He specified that during the day they worked on the identification process of the 12 corpses to deliver them to their families.
In Photos | Gold mines proliferate in Venezuela
The Venezuelan government established a huge mining development zone in 2016 that spans the center of the country to diversify its revenue. Six years later, the mines where excavations are carried out to extract gold, diamonds, copper and other minerals proliferate.
Colina reported in a video previously broadcast on the same network 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.”
El Callao 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.
In Venezuela, mines of copper, diamonds and other precious metals proliferate, but in many the workers carry out their work in very fragile security conditions.
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