The explosion of a stockpile of dynamite at an artisanal gold site has killed at least 59 people in the southwestern region of Burkina Faso, a heavy toll in this impoverished Sahelian country.
At least fifty-five people were killed and as many injured on Monday in the explosion of a stockpile of dynamite at an artisanal gold mining site in southwestern Burkina Faso, officials told AFP. provincial and medical sources.
The accident occurred on Monday afternoon at the Gomgombiro gold panning site (southwest).
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"We have 55 bodies on the site,"
said the High Commissioner of the Poni province Antoine Marie Sylvanus Doamba, who went to the scene of the tragedy.
A hospital source also reported 55 dead and said they had identified at least 55 injured, including women and children.
"The balance sheet could increase since the wounded are still in critical condition and their vital prognosis is seriously engaged,"
she said.
Burkina Faso's national television, for its part, announced a provisional death toll of 59.
"The victims were killed by an explosion caused by a fire in a storage area for contraband dynamite sticks"
which also serves as
a "market office on the gold panning site"
, explained a resident of Gomgombiro.
"Horror Scenes"
He described
"scenes of horror"
, uprooted or charred trees and a
"wide crater"
at the scene of the tragedy.
According to a judicial source, the prosecutor of Faso went to the scene for the usual findings, and
"an investigation has been opened to determine the circumstances"
of the tragedy.
On Friday, two people were killed in a landslide at an artisanal gold site in the southern village of Kollo.
Despite the ban on gold panning, which regularly causes deadly landslides, the authorities are struggling to control the uncontrolled exploitation of gold, carried out by 1.2 million people, according to official figures.
Although declining, gold production has become in a dozen years the first export product of Burkina Faso, whose main export product was previously cotton.
The official gold sector has some 15,000 direct jobs and 50,000 indirect jobs.
But the artisanal sub-sector, also called gold panning, employs 1.5 million people, and generates an additional annual production of around 10 tonnes of gold, according to the Ministry of Mines.
In the wake of Mali and Niger, Burkina Faso has been caught since 2015 in a spiral of violence attributed to jihadist movements, affiliated with Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group, which have killed more than 2,000 people in the country and forced at least 1.5 million people to flee their homes.
Burkina Faso has been suspended from the bodies of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the African Union, without other sanctions for the moment after Lieutenant-Colonel Damiba, 41, took power on January 24 in Ouagadougou after two days of mutinies in several barracks in the country, overthrowing the elected president Roch Marc Christian Kaboré, accused in particular of not having succeeded in countering the jihadist violence which has struck Burkina for nearly seven years.
He set up a junta called the Patriotic Movement for Safeguarding and Restoration (MPSR) which prioritizes
“security”.
