By Sumayya
At least 14 people were killed and seven others hurt after an illegal gold mine fell down in southwestern Colombia, causing new demands for better safety rules and action to handle small-scale digging, leaders said on Monday.
The collapse happened in a countryside area of the Santa Bárbara de Iscuandé town inside the Nariño province. Search and rescue jobs have been finished, Nariño Governor Luis Alfonso Escobar stated, according to Reuters. The governor urged the main government, the National Mining Agency, and the Ministry of Mines and Energy to move faster on work to bring informal and small-scale miners into the legal system, saying that better laws could help make working conditions and safety targets stronger.
The disaster caused an emergency rescue drive in the far-away area. Colombia’s Ombudsman’s Office called for sending the needed workers and tools, including military planes to save and move out hurt people.
It also urged leaders to activate the hospital network, think about sending the Benkos Biojó hospital ship from Guapi, and make sure victims’ bodies are identified and handled with respect. In its October 19 message, the Ombudsman’s Office warned that the presence of illegal armed groups in the area could slow down emergency work and called for safe entry for rescue teams and charity workers.
The message was shared while the number of victims was still being checked. The latest accident follows another deadly mining disaster in Nariño in August, when 13 people died in the Policarpa town, according to Reuters.
These repeated disasters have highlighted the dangers faced by workers at informal mining places, where safety structures and check-ups can be very poor. Illegal and unchecked gold mining stays a massive challenge in Colombia. A government paper shared by the Ministry of Mines and Energy in October, working alongside the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, found 118,410 hectares of land showing signs of river gold mining in 2025.
Out of that space, 75% was linked to illegal or unpermitted work. The report also discovered that 85.6% of towns where this mining was found had the presence of at least one illegal armed group.
These country-wide numbers show the massive size of the problem facing leaders, even though they do not prove the exact working conditions or events that caused this latest collapse.
The government faces heavy pressure to improve check-ups and bring informal miners into the legal system while dealing with the dangers linked to unregulated mining in far-off communities.
