FAIZABAD, Afghanistan, Sept. 20 (Xinhua) -- Three miners of a gold mine lost their lives due to a mudslide in northern Afghanistan's Badakhshan province on Thursday, Provincial Director for Information and Culture Hekmatullah Mohammadi said Friday.

The ill-fated miners were busy extracting gold from a gold mine in Khwahan district on Thursday afternoon when a hilltop slipped suddenly, killing the three on the spot, the official added without providing more details.

A similar incident killed two miners in Badakhshan's neighboring Takhar province a couple of months ago.

Lack of safety measures, unskilled miners, absence of necessary pieces of machinery, and extracting mines by traditional and old-fashioned methods often lead to the death of mine workers in poverty-stricken Afghanistan, according to locals. ■