At least 48 people were killed in the collapse of an illegally operated gold mine in western Mali on Saturday, authorities and local sources told AFP.

Mali is one of Africa’s leading gold producers, and mining sites are regularly the scene of deadly landslides and accidents.

Authorities have struggled to control unregulated mining of the precious metal in the country, which is among the world’s poorest.

“The toll at 18:00 today is 48 dead following the collapse,” said a police source.

“Some of the victims fell into the water. Among them was a woman with her baby on her back.”

A local official confirmed the cave-in, while the Kenieba gold miners’ association also put the death toll at 48.

The accident took place near the town of Kenieba in Mali’s gold-rich Kayes region, Taoule Camara, Secretary General of the National Union of Gold Counters and Refineries (UCROM), told Reuters.

The women had climbed down into open-pit areas left by industrial miners to look for scraps of gold when the earth collapsed around them, he said.

The search for victims was ongoing, the head of an environmental organisation told AFP.

Saturday’s accident took place at an abandoned site formerly operated by a Chinese company, sources told AFP.

In January, a landslide at a gold mine in southern Mali killed at least 10 people and left many others missing, most of them women.

Just over a year ago, a tunnel collapsed at a gold mining site in the same region as Saturday’s landslide, killing more than 70 people. (AFP: Text, Excluding Headline)