Zimbabwe Retrieves 24 Bodies From Collapsed Mine, Union Says

(Bloomberg) -- Zimbabwe removed 24 bodies of artisanal miners who had been trapped in two collapsed gold shafts since Tuesday, according to a union official.

“So far we have retrieved 24 bodies from the two shafts and 23 of them have since been positively identified,” Henrietta Rushwaya, president of the Zimbabwe Miners Federation, told reporters in Battlefields town, 170 kilometers (106 miles) west of the capital, Harare.

The search continues for dozens more miners who are still trapped in the shafts. Eight miners were pulled out alive on Saturday, four days after the tunnels collapsed following flooding. Seven of them have been treated and discharged from hospital, and a team of four is still underground pumping out the water, Rushwaya said.

Most of Zimbabwe’s gold is produced by small-scale miners, who mainly work in unsafe and disused mines. The country produced 33.3 tons of the metal last year.

To contact the reporter on this story: Godfrey Marawanyika in Harare at gmarawanyika@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Paul Richardson at pmrichardson@bloomberg.net, Helen Nyambura, Amanda Jordan

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.