An artisanal gold pit gave way on August 18, 2026, at the village of Zamboye, in the western Central African Republic’s Nana-Mambéré prefecture, killing more than 100 miners. A Red Cross volunteer gave that figure to The Associated Press, a senior official at a local mining association gave it to Reuters, and local sources gave it to AFP. The government has put the official toll at 49 — a count local sources say falls well short of the real number — while crews dig through unstable earth for the missing.
It took days for the scale of the disaster to register, as harrowing footage of the cave-in spread online. One video from the site captured the ground opening at a sprawling open pit worked by hundreds of artisanal miners, swallowing people where they stood. In other clips, mud-covered workers, men and women, hauled a body out of the hole as others milled across the site and several shouted for help.
Several people were still missing and others remained pinned beneath the debris, said Bertrand Be Yangué, a member of the Zamboye youth council, who expected the toll to climb as the search went on. “Finding them alive would be a miracle,” Yangué said. Young men and women had died at a site they came to in the hope of providing for their families, he added, and the community had been left devastated.
How the Ground Gave Way
Several of the underground tunnels being worked by miners collapsed, and that failure appears to have triggered the slide, according to a statement from the Baboua public prosecutor. What caused the collapse, who the victims were and whether anyone should face criminal liability are all questions authorities are still working to answer. The town of Baboua, near the Cameroonian frontier, lies about 50 kilometers (31 miles) from Zamboye.
The collapse was catastrophic and the ground beneath the workings simply gave way, said Cedric Mbango, who mines at the site. Rescuers and villagers pulled 30 bodies out in the hours after the cave-in, said Souleymane Bi, deputy mayor of the sub-prefecture, who appealed for outside assistance to reach those still buried. Crews were still searching for trapped colleagues, said Florian Gaguende, a miner who survived, though the prospect of finding anyone alive “is getting slimmer.”
Roger Bana Nzala traveled overnight from Bouar to Zamboye after learning his brother was in danger, arriving at the mine early in the morning. The family had hoped to bring the body back to Bouar for burial. “We weren’t able to find our brother; he is still in the ground, he is buried in the ground… In the end, we are forced to return empty-handed,” he said in an account reported August 21, 2026.
A Search Slowed by Scarce Gear
Nobody knows how many people were inside the workings when the ground moved. More than 100 bodies had been recovered, said Gervais Ganagoroh, a local Red Cross volunteer involved in the relief effort, a figure a senior official at a local mining association also confirmed. Several survivors were critically injured, a hospital in Baboua took them in, and the search continued on August 19.
There were no modern safety standards at the mine and no heavy equipment; crews worked with hand tools and improvised structures. Remoteness and the absence of specialized rescue gear slowed the push to reach anyone still alive. Tractors and other heavy machinery had been brought in for the recovery, according to local reporting in the Central African Republic, a method that risks crushing survivors trapped below. A formal toll was still difficult to fix, Laurent Ngon Baba, an elected official in Baboua, said on August 19. Touring the site that day, Mines Minister Rufin Benam-Beltoungou set the official count at 49, with a hospital in Baboua taking in seven injured miners. The pit kept collapsing and heavy rains had flooded its lower sections, so authorities suspended the search on Thursday, August 20, 2026, barring access to the mine and closing the site. Security around the shuttered site was later reinforced, “including personnel from the Russian paramilitary group,” according to an account updated August 21, 2026.
Three countries lost people in the pit. On the Mines Ministry’s list of the 49 victims in the official count are 34 Central Africans, two Chadians and 13 Cameroonians. His administration was coordinating closely with Central African officials on the aftermath, Grégoire Mvongo, governor of Cameroon’s eastern region, said on public broadcaster CRTV. Any wounded who crossed the border could be taken in by its hospitals, Cameroon said.
A Pattern of Deadly Collapses
Few mining accidents in recent years have killed as many people as the Zamboye disaster, and it comes after a run of smaller collapses. A comparable cave-in in June 2026 killed dozens at the Be-Mbari gold site, which also lies along the frontier between the Central African Republic and Cameroon. A landslide at a mine in Ngourroum, in the west of the country, killed seven in the middle of March 2026, according to AFP; the AP put that toll at eight and placed the village in Ouham-Pendé. Gordi, in the northeast, lost another 20 in February 2026. Counting Zamboye, mining accidents have killed well over 150 people in the country this year.
Between 150,000 and 300,000 people work in small-scale, informal extraction in the Central African Republic, according to the World Bank-backed Delve database, largely beyond government control. Miners rarely have protective gear, and the accidents often kill. Writing in March for the Institute for Security Studies, where she researches for its Central Africa Observatory on Organised Crime and Violence, Aicha Pemboura noted that the country regulates artisanal mining on paper, yet many miners and traders work without permits, dig in off-limits areas or move their gold outside official channels. The sector employs tens of millions across sub-Saharan Africa; weak formal economies leave a void that it fills even where the practice is criminalized.
Blame, Politics and Regulation
Martin Ziguélé, who heads the Movement for the Liberation of the Central African People, said the government bears direct responsibility for the repeated tragedies. Condolences to the victims’ families came from Evariste Ngamana, the Central African Republic government spokesman, who said authorities were pressing to deliver relief and assistance.
Those who grow rich from illegal mineral extraction show no concern for the destitute workers who labor at unregulated sites without safety measures, said Cameroonian opposition leader Maurice Kamto, who finished second to President Paul Biya in the 2018 election. A new mining code was adopted in 2023 by Cameroon, which is counting on iron, diamonds, gold, bauxite and cobalt to develop its economy. After finding a gap between declared exports and the imports logged by receiving countries, notably the United Arab Emirates, its government has tightened oversight of the gold sector, and says more than 200 companies mine there without a permit or authorization.