At least 14 illegal gold miners were killed in Guinea on Wednesday when disused mineshafts they were working in collapsed, a witness said.

The mine collapse happened near the village of Boireyah, near Siguiri, 800 km (500 miles) east of Conakry.

“The victims, all men, were killed inside the mines. They were buried underground. There were 14 killed and several injured,” Laye Diawara, a resident of Siguiri who saw the accident site, told Reuters by telephone.

“They were illegal miners. Earlier, soldiers had chased them away from the site but they came back, and that’s when the accident happened,” Diawara said.

“The people who were on the lookout in case the soldiers came back went to help them, but it was too late for most of them,” he said.

A senior police officer confirmed the collapse but did not know how many people had been killed.

“There were people killed in the collapse, but we haven’t got precise figures because we haven’t yet received a report,” said the officer, who declined to be identified.

South Africa’s Anglogold Ashanti operates a concession at Siguiri, producing 300,000 ounces of gold a year.

The company’s executive vice-president for Africa, Richard Duffy, said in September the mine’s output was expected to rise to 500,000 in five or six years.

Anglogold Ashanti’s processing plant at Siguiri was under armed guard on Wednesday after demonstrations by local residents demanding better electricity services used tree trunks and barricades to block roads leading to the site.

Residents of different parts of the West African country have staged a string of protests, often targeting mining installations, in the past month to press demands for better public services, in particular mains water and electricity.

Several people have been killed, most shot dead by security forces in the former French colony, where most people live in poverty despite being the world’s top exporter of bauxite, the ore used to make aluminium.

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