Landslide kills 14 workers at mining site in Tanzania

USPA News - At least fourteen people were killed Sunday when a landslide buried workers at a mining site in northern Tanzania, rescue workers said on late Monday. No less than six other workers are believed to be missing and feared to have been killed.

The incident occurred at around 11 a.m. local time on Sunday at the site of a gravel mine in the Moshono area of Arusha Region, which is located some 325 kilometers (200 miles) north of the capital Dodoma. More than 20 people, including truck drivers, were at the site when it happened. Police commander Hemed Kilonge said the incident followed days of torrential rains in the area, causing a steep slope above the site to collapse, burying a group of workers and two transport trucks. He said fourteen bodies had been recovered by late Monday evening, but at least six others remain missing and are feared to have been killed. Emergency teams, which include soldiers from Tanzania`s People`s Defense Forces, were working at the site to recover the missing workers, which include at least one truck driver. The incident comes only days after a building collapse in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania`s largest city, killed 36 people. With many people working in highly unsafe and unstable mines, often using primitive tools while getting little to no pay, mine accidents happen regularly in Tanzania. But while hundreds of mine workers have died on the job in recent years, accidents on the scale of Sunday`s incident are rare. In April 2010, at least 16 people were killed and 20 others were injured when a mine shaft caved in at a gold mine in Geita District in the country`s Mwanza Region. And at least 66 miners were killed in March 2008 when floods swept through a gemstone mine near Mount Kilimanjaro in northern Tanzania.