TWELVE people have been rescued from an informal gold mine in eastern Congo that collapsed over the weekend, trapping an unknown number of the thousands of miners working there, the provincial governor said on Wednesday.

The Lomera gold mine in the South Kivu province collapsed on Sunday following a landslide, burying numerous miners working in the underground tunnels, governor Patrick Busu bwa Ngwi Nshombothe said in a statement following his visit to the site.

Mr Nshombothe, appointed by a militia group that controls the area, said over 4,700 miners work on the site and that the death toll and numbers missing are unknown. Search and rescue efforts continue.

The South Kivu region has recently been hit by heavy rains, triggering landslides in several villages and mining sites.

The Lomera site is an artisanal mine, operated by individual workers using basic tools, often in hazardous conditions.

It is located in a territory controlled by M23, an armed group backed by neighbouring Rwanda. The group seized two large parts of mineral-rich eastern Congo in a major advance early this year.

Thousands of people had come to Lomera in recent months, turning the area into a “sprawling chaos of mineshafts and makeshift shelters,” international aid group Doctors Without Borders said in a statement last month.