BOUAR, CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC / MENA Newswire / — At least 23 people were killed when a landslide tore through the artisanal gold mining site of Bé-Mbari in western Central African Republic on May 6, and local reports later said the death toll may have risen to around 60. The collapse struck the remote site in Nana-Mambéré prefecture near the border with Cameroon, turning a routine day of digging for gold into one of the country’s deadliest mining accidents of the year.
The Bé-Mbari site lies about 250 kilometers from Bouar, in a difficult to access area where artisanal mining is a major source of income for local communities. The initial reported death toll was 23, with local reporting saying all of those victims had been recovered from the debris and buried by relatives. In the days that followed, reports from the area said more bodies were believed to be under the earth, pushing the toll higher and deepening uncertainty over the final number of dead.
No public death toll had been issued by national authorities as of the latest local reporting, and there had been no formal public communication from the Ministry of Mines and Geology. The Regional Directorate of Mines for the Northwest, based in Bouar, also had not publicly clarified the casualty figure or released details on any official inquiry. The absence of an official update left the known facts to be pieced together from local reporting and accounts gathered in communities around the mine.
Toll remains unclear as mining stays halted
Mining activity at Bé-Mbari remained suspended more than a week after the collapse, according to the latest reporting from the area. Residents in surrounding communities were still mourning the dead, while work at the site had not resumed. The shutdown underscored the scale of the disaster at a mine that local reporting described as an important gold producing site in western Central African Republic, where miners depend on informal extraction and where operations can continue far from effective state supervision.
The latest accounts from the area also pointed to persistent failures in compliance with artisanal mining rules. Local reporting said the Bé-Mbari site had been operating in conditions where state oversight was limited and basic safeguards were not consistently observed. That combination has long left miners exposed to cave ins and landslides, particularly at hand dug sites where pits and embankments can become unstable. In Bé-Mbari, the result was a collapse that halted work and left entire nearby communities dealing with the aftermath.
Previous collapses underscore safety risks
The disaster at Bé-Mbari followed other deadly mining accidents in Central African Republic this year. In March, an artisanal mine collapse in Nourroum, in Ouham-Péndé prefecture in the northwest, killed eight miners and injured five others. That earlier accident reinforced how often fatalities occur in small scale mining areas where safety standards are weak and workers continue to enter unstable pits in search of gold and other minerals. The pattern has made mine safety an increasingly urgent issue across the country’s mineral rich regions.
For Central African Republic, the landslide at Bé-Mbari is both a human tragedy and another reminder of the dangers surrounding artisanal gold extraction. The country’s mining sector remains an economic lifeline for many communities, but repeated collapses have shown how vulnerable workers are when excavation continues without reliable oversight or protection. As families bury the dead and the final toll from Bé-Mbari remains unsettled, the collapse stands as one of the clearest signs yet of the risks embedded in the country’s informal mining economy.