Bogota:
The bodies of seven people all members of the same family have been recovered from a collapsed gold mine in western Colombia, authorities said.
The cave-in occurred on Wednesday at a mine in the department of Cauca that was being operated legally by the family whose members were killed, Colonel Ramiro Perez Manzano, police commander for Cauca department, told AFP.
The bodies have been removed from the rural site and sent via river, the only means out of the area, to the town of Timbiqui, the police commander said.
A little over a month ago two people were killed in a coal mining accident in Cundinamarca department, and in May a landslide at an illegal gold mine in Cauca killed 12.
Colombia has upwards of 14,000 mines, more than half of which operate without proper permits, officials say.
The mining industry represents 2.3 percent of the country's GDP, according to the National Statistics Institute.