One by one, the men pop out of a small hole in the earth to the cheers of dozens of fellow miners. Ten artisanal miners were rescued on March 24 after spending 18 hours trapped underground after a landslide at the Mitondo Hill mining site in the South Kivu province in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. A video showing the rescue was shared widely online. While initial reports say that no lives were lost in this accident, it was a close call – and remains proof of the terrible danger faced daily by the nation’s artisanal miners.
The stunning, almost unbelievable, video shows a man balanced on a patch of earth, using a shovel to create an opening. He brings down the shovel several times before a man springs from the earth – one of the trapped miners. Eight other men pop out behind him in quick succession, to the yells of the crowd. This incredible video, filmed the afternoon of March 24 at the Mitondo Hill mining site in Nyange, South Kivu, has since garnered tens of thousands of views on different platforms.
