At least six people have been killed in a clash between gold miners who used dynamite to create a powerful explosion.
The dispute between the rival groups in northwestern Bolivia turned deadly early on Thursday morning, when the blast ripped through the Yanai mining camp, turning it to rubble.
The miners have been fighting over access to a gold mine near the mountain town of Sorata, about 90 miles (150 kilometres) from La Paz, Bolivia’s administrative capital.
"We’re continuing the rescue efforts,” local police officer Col. Gunther Agudo said.
Prosecutors arrived at the scene on Thursday to find the blast had destroyed several homes and cut electricity supplies.
Bolivia's mining industry is notable for its huge sector of cooperatives — legal groups of artisanal miners — comprising most of the mining labor force.
They wield political clout in the resource-rich country, where they have representation in Parliament.
Cooperatives historically emerged in Bolivia as more established mining operations dismissed legions of workers in the risky, boom-and-bust business, compelling miners to organize themselves when commodity prices slumped and lay-offs loomed.
Over the decades, cooperatives have increasingly fought over the chance to extract minerals — hurling rocks and dynamite sticks among themselves and against unionized, salaried workers from Bolivia's state-run mining company, Comibol.
The company came to dominate the crucial industry under former President Evo Morales, a socialist leader who governed the landlocked Andean nation from 2006 to 2019 and barred foreign companies from having a controlling stake in mineral extraction.
In Thursday's clash, the struggle for control of certain veins of the gold reserve between two rival cooperatives had simmered for years, said Jhony Silva, a legal advisor to one of them.
Silva told Bolivian state TV that the dead bodies were recovered from under the rubble.
He also said there were reports of people still missing, without offering further details.
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