The cave-in occurred on the “Detroit” mine site at around 3 p.m. local (1300 GMT) following heavy rains, said Emiliane Itongwa, president of the Initiative of Support and Social Supervision of Women.

“Several miners were in the shaft which was covered and no one could get out. We are talking about 50 young people,” Itongwa said.

Photos and videos on social media showed hundreds of people, some of whom could be heard wailing on a hillside around the mine-shaft entrance.

The mine was not located on the Kamituga gold concession owned by Canadian miner Banro Corporation, the company’s chief executive said.

Mining accidents are common in unregulated artisanal mines in Congo, with dozens of deaths every year in mines where often ill-equipped diggers borrow deep underground in search for ore.

A landslide at a disused gold mine killed 16 in October last year, while 43 illegal miners died in another landslide at a copper and cobalt mine in June 2019.

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The collapse at the mine’s main entrance trapped 87 workers underground, all of whom were rescued, the small gold producer said in a statement, but three others who had been working on the surface at the time could not be accounted for.

No fatalities were reported. Work at the mine was suspended pending investigation on what caused the collapse, Vantage said.

“The three missing are office workers, not miners. We are not going to rest until we find them,” Mike Begg told reporters at the mine near the town of Barberton in Mpumalanga province, about 360 km (225 miles) east of Johannesburg.

Reporters were not allowed near the site where the cave-in occurred, and a crowd stood outside the perimeter fence awaiting word on the results of rescue attempts.

Vantage Goldfields is an Australia-based company mining gold at Barberton, a town that traces its origin to South Africa’s 19th century gold rush. Vantage was delisted from the Australian bourse in January 2015.

“At this point, it’s unclear what caused the disaster,” Manzini Zungu, a spokesman for the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union, said.

South Africa’s mines are the deepest and among the most dangerous in the world. The number of deaths in the industry has fallen due to both improved safety practices and a reduction in the labor force as production declines.

Last year, 77 workers were killed in mining accidents, the lowest number on record, compared with 84 in 2014.

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The mine at Ndassima is carved deep into a forested hilltop north of Seleka’s military headquarters in Bambari. It is owned by Canada’s Axmin but was overrun by rebels more than year ago and now forms part of an illicit economy driving sectarian conflict in the country.

At least 27 artisanal miners were buried in the collapse of the mine on Thursday and 25 bodies have been retrieved, Negat said.

“Nobody from our service is on the ground to regulate the miners so they dig without any rules. Lower than 3 metres it gets dangerous and with rain there can be collapses,” Georges Yacinth-Oubaouba, a senior official in the Ministry of Mines, told Reuters. He confirmed the incident.

At Ndassima, labourers toil beneath the gaze of Seleka gunmen to produce some 15 kilos of gold a month – worth roughly $350,000 on the local market, or double that in international trade.

Thousands of people have died and more than a million fled their homes in Central African Republic amid the violence between the Seleka rebels and Christian militia.

Some 2,000 French and 6,000 Africa Union peacekeepers have been deployed to Central African Republic, but they have struggled to help the weak transitional government stamp its authority on the mineral-rich country.

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