Five miners were crushed to death after a collapse inside a gold mine in the Bolivian department of Potosi, police said.

The victims of the disaster at the Amayapampa mine on Friday (local time) were found buried under a landslide.

“Five adults were found inside the mine. The cause of death was suffocation due to crushing,” Potosi Police Commander Fernando Benitez told journalists.

“We assume that part of the hill collapsed and crushed them.”

The Amayapampa site is the largest gold mine in Potosi and is operated as an open-pit mine by the state-owned Bolivian Mining Corporation (Comibol).

It is located at an altitude of more than 4000m in Potosi, about 578km south of La Paz.

According to the police, the deceased were not regular Comibol employees, but had official permits to carry out the traditional “paqoma,” or the collecting of residual ore.

This accident brings the number of deaths in mining incidents in Potosi so far this year to 73, Benitez said.

In March, five miners died as a result of a collapse in a mine in the city of La Paz.

– Agence France-Presse