Africanews.com, a news and media website on Feb 23, 2022, shared a news article titled, “Seven killed in Ethiopia mine collapse.” By the time this article was published the news was shared four times on Africa News’ Facebook page.
However, HaqCheck inspected the image and proved that the image doesn’t prove a mine collapse incident in Ethiopia.
Therefore HaqCheck rendered the post False.
Even though the oil and gas sector is still at the exploration phase, Ethiopia Has a rich deposit of Coal, Tantalum, iron, Nickel, Manganese, Potash, and Phosphate.
The Ministry of Mines and Petroleum announced that in the 2020/2021 fiscal year, Ethiopia has secured 682 million US Dollars from the mineral and gemstone mining sectors.
State Minister of Ministry of Mines and Petroleum, Simegn Wube stated that the revenue is earned from the supply of over 9,384 Kg of gold to the National Bank of Ethiopia and mining of gemstones including Tantalum and Opal.
According to the Africanews’ news report, the incident occurred as the artisanal gold miners were caught up by the incident and buried underground while they were searching for gold.
In the course of HaqCheck’s investigation, the image was first found on Dec 28, 2021, on different news websites with a title, “More than 30 killed in Sudan gold mine collapse.”
According to the reports in the different websites, at least 31 miners were killed and eight missing in Sudan.
The Associated Press reported the incident that a rudimentary gold mine collapsed and the country’s state-run mining company said, “workers and villagers were searching the Darsaya mine for more bodies and possible survivors” On Dec 29, 2021. The mine is located in the Fuja village, around 700 kilometers south of the capital of Khartoum.
The News report also used two of its tweets from last year. Both of them are about a mine collapse that happened in Niger and Sudan respectively.
Until this article is published there is no official news about the mine collapse incident. Therefore, HaqCheck inspected the image used as a reference to the news report and rendered it False.
