KOLWEZI, Congo — At least 32 people were killed in a mining accident at the Kalando copper and cobalt site in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Lualaba province after a makeshift bridge collapsed, provincial authorities said Sunday. Officials said the span had been closed following heavy rains; SAEMAPE cautioned that the death toll was likely to rise to 40 as counts were updated Nov. 17, 2025
Provincial leaders said illegal diggers broke into a restricted area; gunfire by soldiers guarding the site caused panic, followed by people rushing onto the bridge, which gave way. Such accountation correlates with some of the early, difficult-to-substantiate media coverage and a SAEMAPE report.
On Sunday, emergency crews and residents worked to pull bodies out of the rubble and search for survivors. Provincial authorities shut down operations on the site, while rights advocates called for an independent review of the military’s role in the mayhem that led up to the collapse, local reporting said.
Kalando is located in Congo’s copper–cobalt belt, a key node in the supply chain for electric-vehicle batteries. The army deployments, as described in a 2019 analysis by Reuters, were little more than periodic security crackdowns aimed at chasing out artisanal miners from sites.
Past disasters underscore the pattern. At least 43 artisanal miners were killed in June 2019 in a gallery collapse at Glencore’s Kamoto Copper Company pit, near Kolwezi, which again drew attention to continuing perimeter risks around very large concessions.
In 2020, a cave-in at South Kivu’s Kamituga gold mine killed some 50 workers following heavy rains, another example of the deadly risks inside unregulated shafts.
The collapse of the Congo mine bridge has brought renewed calls for safer crossings, clearer access rules, and rapid-response plans at mixed industrial-artisanal sites. Officials have warned that the death toll, now confirmed at 50, is likely to rise as identifications continue and families report missing relatives.
