The Malian government is calling on gold miners to avoid unsecured sites, following a collapse in an artisanal gold mine that officially killed around forty people last week.

A delegation led by the Minister of Mines, Amadou Keita, went on Monday to the village of Bilali-koto (west), where the accident occurred on Saturday in an illegal mine, formerly operated by a Chinese company.

Mali, one of the poorest countries in the world, is also one of the leading gold producers in Africa.

"We must avoid unsecured sites. We must all think and act by imposing certain rules of conduct on ourselves that will protect us from such damage," said Minister Keita, quoted in a statement sent Tuesday by the Ministry of Mines.

The delegation met with community leaders in three villages with victims, to "prevent this from happening again," the text said.

The collapse left "around forty people dead, the majority of them women," according to the government statement.

Local sources had told AFP that the death toll was at least 48.

A little over a year ago, a particularly deadly landslide left more than 70 people dead in a gold mine in southern Mali.

At the end of January, at least ten gold miners were killed, mostly women, following the collapse of a mine in the south of the country.

Accidents are also regularly reported in Guinea and Senegal, in border regions of western Mali.

Gold attracts large foreign groups that work with it legally, but also artisanal gold miners from all over the region who the authorities are struggling to curb and who take considerable risks, without any protection, in the hope of finding gold.

In a 2023 report, the World Bank recalls that the "mining sector is a fundamental pillar of the Malian economy". Gold contributes to a quarter of Mali's national budget.

This Sahelian country, ruled by a junta, has been in the grip of a deep security crisis since 2012, fuelled in particular by violence from jihadist groups as well as community criminal groups.