KABUL, AFGHANISTAN – A gold mine collapse killed five people, including two children, and injured eight others in Afghanistan’s northeastern Badakhshan province on Friday, the Taliban Ministry of Defense said.
The incident occurred in Shahr-e-Buzurg district after a landslide caused the mine to cave in, trapping workers who were extracting gold, the ministry said in a statement. The collapse took place in a remote area where small-scale mining operations are common.
The wounded were taken to local health facilities for treatment, while rescue teams pulled several others alive from under the rubble, it added. Authorities did not provide details on the cause of the landslide.
Badakhshan, a mountainous province bordering Tajikistan, hosts some of Afghanistan’s largest gold deposits and has long been a center for informal and small-scale mining activities.
Deadly mining accidents occur frequently in Afghanistan, where operations are often carried out with limited technical equipment and weak safety oversight. Collapses, gas exposure, and explosions have repeatedly caused casualties among miners.
In one of the deadliest incidents, at least 30 miners were killed, and several others were injured in 2019 when a gold mine collapsed in the Kohistan district of Badakhshan. Officials and analysts have cited the absence of modern machinery, engineering expertise, and basic safety standards as key factors behind recurring accidents in the country’s mining sector.