Deaths came after miners rushed a makeshift bridge at the Kalando mine in southeastern Lualaba province, official says.<\/p>\n
Published On 17 Nov 202517 Nov 2025<\/p>\n
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At least 32 people have been killed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), according to officials, after a bridge at a copper and cobalt mine collapsed due to overcrowding.<\/p>\n
The incident occurred at the Kalando mine in southeastern Lualaba province on Saturday, the province\u2019s interior minister, Roy Kaumbe Mayonde, said on Sunday.<\/p>\n
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\u201cDespite a formal ban on access to the site because of the heavy rain and the risk of a landslide, wildcat miners forced their way into the quarry,\u201d said Mayonde.<\/p>\n
The miners rushing across the makeshift bridge, built to get across a flooded trench, made it collapse, he added.<\/p>\n
A report by the DRC\u2019s Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining Support and Guidance Service, or SAEMAPE, said the gunfire from soldiers at the site had sparked panic among the miners.<\/p>\n
The miners then rushed to the bridge, resulting in the fall that left them \u201cpiled on top of each other, causing the deaths and injuries\u201d, it said.<\/p>\n
While Mayonde put the death toll at least 32, the report said at least 40 people had lost their lives.<\/p>\n
The report said the mine had been at the heart of a longstanding dispute between the wildcat miners, a cooperative that was meant to organise digging there, and the site\u2019s legal operators, who were said to have Chinese involvement.<\/p>\n
Arthur Kabulo, the provincial coordinator for the National Human Rights Commission, told the AFP news agency that more than 10,000 wildcat miners operated at Kalando.<\/p>\n
Provincial authorities suspended operations at the site on Sunday.<\/p>\n
The Initiative for the Protection of Human Rights, meanwhile, called for an independent investigation into the military\u2019s role in the deaths, citing reports of clashes between miners and soldiers.<\/p>\n
There was no immediate comment from the military.<\/p>\n
The DRC is the world\u2019s largest producer of cobalt, a mineral used to make lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles and other products, with Chinese companies controlling 80 percent of the production in the central African country.<\/p>\n
Accusations of child labour, unsafe conditions, and corruption have long plagued the country\u2019s cobalt mining industry.<\/p>\n
The DRC\u2019s mineral wealth has also been at the heart of a conflict that has ravaged the country\u2019s east for more than three decades.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Deaths came after miners rushed a makeshift bridge at the Kalando mine in southeastern Lualaba province, official says.…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":384399,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[7779,18596,50,103],"class_list":{"0":"post-384398","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-africa","9":"tag-democratic-republic-of-the-congo","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115563037049009131","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=384398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384398\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/384399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=384398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=384398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=384398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}