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A bridge collapsed at a cobalt mine in southeast Democratic Republic of Congo, killing at least 32 wildcat miners, a regional government official said Sunday.

The bridge came down Saturday onto a flooded zone at the mine in Lualaba province, Roy Kaumba Mayonde, the provincial interior minister, told reporters. He said 32 bodies had been recovered and more were being searched for.

The DRC produces more than 70 percent of the world’s supply of cobalt, which is essential for batteries used in electric cars, many laptop computers, and mobile phones.

More than 200,000 people are estimated to be working in giant illegal cobalt mines in the giant central African country.

Local authorities said the bridge collapsed at the Kalando mine, about 42 kilometres (26 miles) southeast of the Lualaba provincial capital, Kolwezi.

“Despite 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,” said Mayonde.

He said that miners rushing across the makeshift bridge, built to get across a flooded trench, made it collapse.

A report by the SAEMAPE government agency, which monitors and helps mining cooperatives, said that the presence of soldiers at the Kalando mine had caused panic.

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’s legal operators, who were said to have Chinese involvement.

The miners who fell “piled on top of each other, causing the deaths and injuries”, the report said.

Images sent to AFP by the provincial office of the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) showed miners digging out bodies from the trench, with at least 17 bodies laid out on the ground nearby.

CNDH provincial coordinator Arthur Kabulo told AFP that more than 10,000 wildcat miners operated at Kalando. Provincial authorities suspended operations at the site on Sunday.

Accusations over the use of child labour, dangerous conditions, and corruption have long cast a shadow over the DRC’s cobalt mining industry.

The DRC’s mineral wealth has also been at the heart of a conflict that has ravaged the country’s east for more than three decades.

AFP