BarcelonaAt least 16 people have died in the collapse of an illegal gold mine in Venezuela. Pictures of the moment of the landslide went viral, captured on a mobile phone, as the ground began to collapse on the miners.
The event occurred in the Venezuelan state of Bolivar, in the south of the country in a border area with Brazil, according to Efe. At least 16 people were killed and 11 others were injured. These statements were provided by the government of Nicolas Maduro, which immediately rejected the first statements presented by the mayor of the city where the event occurred, Jorge Arciniega, who spoke of 30 dead and about 100 missing.
Deputy Minister of Risk Management and Civil Protection, Carlos Pérez Ambueda, told X that rescue teams were able to extract 11 people injured for various reasons from under the rubble, and also found 16 bodies. In the town of La Paragua, “campaign triage tents for pre-hospital care” were installed, in addition to “autopsy rooms.” [ateses] By forensic experts.
President Maduro himself has also spoken about this, stressing that it is an illegal mine and that the area is “very remote” and has communication problems, but despite this, rescue teams are “already on site.” The main opposition coalition, the Democratic Unionist Party, wanted to express its “profound sadness” at the deaths of these miners and also took the opportunity to criticize “the conditions in which mining activity is carried out in many cases”. “The way Nicolás Maduro’s regime allows mining activities in this region only leads to humanitarian and environmental tragedies for our country,” the X blog said.
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