5 bodies retrieved from collapsed mine pit in Ghana

Bodies of five dead small-scale miners were on Thursday afternoon retrieved from the collapsed mine at Dunkwaw-on-Offin in the Central Region of Ghana, 114 km west of the capital Accra.

Many more bodies, mangled together, were also sighted by rescue workers who had been working since Monday to save the lives of those trapped gold miners in the pit.

Central Regional Fire Officer Michael Opoku Nkansah who spoke to Xinhua via telephone said the dead bodies were at various levels of decomposition and was difficult to identify and number.

"We see bodies here and there, stack in the mud, but we need to scoop carefully in order not to decapitate them, otherwise we would have been using excavators to retrieve them," Nkansah said.

Work would however be continued to retrieve more bodies buried under the rubble.

Nkansah said although the bodies had not yet been sent to any mortuary, there was a team of medical doctors, environmental officers and other para-medics at the site of the disaster supervising activities.

Kojo Antwi, a 42 year old cocoa farmer and a small-scale miner who escaped the disaster last Sunday said there were about 144 small scale miners in the pit when the pit caved in, there were also women and children involved.

Survivors had put the number of those believed to have perished at about 80.

The pit owner has been arrested to help the police in their investigations.

Source: Xinhua