The quest to chance upon large amounts of one of the world’s most precious and rarest metals, led dozens of villagers in northern Afghanistan to their tragic demise.

Over 40 villagers in northeastern Afghanistan’s Badakhshan province died after an illegal tunnel they dug into the ground, collapsed suddenly on Sunday.

The incident, which occurred in Kohestan district of the province, crushed the local villagers who had been searching for gold deep inside the 60m (220ft) deep makeshift shaft they dug in a river bed, reports afghanistannews.net.

Badakhshan’s Provincial officials confirmed the mine collapse on Sunday and said that all the 40 people killed in the tragedy were miners.

In a statement issued to the local media, a spokesman for the provincial governor, Nek Mohammad Nazari said that all the miners were local villagers.

He said that the miners died after the tunnel they were digging suddenly caved in.

Nazari also noted, ‘Poor villagers during winters try to compensate their earnings by pursuing illegal mining. They dig tunnels to enter the mines.’

He added that ten more miners were injured in the incident.

In a separate statement, the Afghan parliament member Fawzia Koofi said that the miners were killed as they searched for gold in the Kohestan district.

He told reporters that an initial investigation into the incident had revealed that the villagers had been using an excavator at the site, which is believed to have caused the mine to collapse.

Immediately after the incident, local reports quoted Sanaullah Rohani, a police spokesman for Badakhshan province as saying that the mine collapsed when the area had been experiencing heavy snowfall.

Initially Rohani said that a landslide was believed to have caused the accident.

He also told reporters that nearly 50 illegal miners were present inside the mine when the incident occurred.

According to officials in the province, two rescue teams had been deployed to help the miners injured.

According to the Kohistan District Chief Rostam Raghi the victims from nearby villages had been mining for gold illegally, instead of carrying out the activity in a government project.

Raghi added, ‘The villagers have been involved in this business for decades with no government control over them.’

He said, ‘Locals rushed to the scene and managed to rescue only 13 workers. Dozens of others, including some children, died. We have sent a rescue team to the area, but villagers have already started removing bodies from the site.’

A report in AFP quoted a spokesman for the Afghanistan National Disaster Management Authority as saying that families of the victims would receive 50,000 afghanis ($660).

The vast and largely untapped resources in Afghanistan have been the cause of deadly clashes with the Taliban, that has been leading an insurgency in the country for several years.

The ongoing conflict between the government and insurgents has led to the rise in illegal mining in many resource-rich areas of the country, especially in the northern mountainous provinces of Afghanistan.

While Taliban fighters use illegal mining activities as a key source of revenue to fund their insurgency against the Western-backed Afghan government, villagers in many provinces too have become involved in the illegal mining business over the years.

However, the country’s mines have experienced several severe safety issues since many of the mines are old and poorly maintained.

In a bid to explore the country’s resources legally, the Afghan government signed two contracts to explore copper and gold deposits last year.

The exploration contracts covered Afghanistan’s northern provinces and were signed as part of the government’s efforts to try to prevent illegal mining.

Officials in Kabul are also making efforts to move away from the country’s dependence on foreign aid by tapping its natural resources.