Many feared dead in Afghanistan gold mine clash

A clash over gold mining in northern Afghanistan has resulted in casualties, a Taliban official told AFP on Tuesday, after a resident said multiple people were killed in the violence.

“A clash between employees of a contracted company and local residents over the extraction of a gold mine in Chah Ab district of Takhar province has resulted in both human and financial losses,” said Humayoun Afghan, the spokesman for the Ministry of Mines and Petroleum.

“A delegation from the ministry has been sent to Takhar to investigate the incident,” he told AFP.

The ministry official did not detail whether there had been fatalities in Chah Ab, a rural district bordering Tajikistan, nor when the violence erupted.

One resident told AFP of “harassment” by miners from other provinces, with violence breaking out in recent days after “the area that supplied the local people with drinking water was destroyed by the miners.”

“The locals rebelled against them with stones and sticks,” he said Monday, on the condition of anonymity due to security concerns.

The resident told AFP multiple people were killed and the miners had since fled the area.

Officials and medics in Takhar did not respond to requests by AFP to comment on the incident.

Along with gold, Afghanistan mines marble, minerals, gemstones and coal.

Resources, including copper and lithium, buried across Afghanistan’s rocky landscape are estimated to be worth a trillion dollars, according to US and UN assessments from 2010 and 2013.

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The Taliban government has vowed to restore security to the country and is courting Afghan and foreign investors to exploit its underground wealth and secure a crucial revenue stream as foreign aid funding dries up.

AFP