A rock fall caused by a tremor killed three people and injured four at one of AngloGold Ashanti's South African mines on Tuesday, the company said. A tremor of 2.4 on the Richter scale casued the fall some 3 km underground at the TauTona mine near Carletonville, southwest of Johannesburg, the world's second biggest gold miner said in a statement. The immediate area where the rock fall took place had been temporarily closed off but there would be no major impact on production, AngloGold said. "We are not talking about any significant loss in accounting terms," said company spokesman Alan Fine. Two people sustained serious injuries and two others suffered minor wounds. South Africa's mining industry has been hit by a number of tremors and accidents in the past year, including a similar incident at TauTona in July which killed two miners. A rock fall at AngloGold's Mponeng mine killed two workers in October and in May, a tremor measuring 3.2 killed five miners at Gold Fields Dreifontein mine. AngloGold, which is majority owned by mining giant Anglo American Plc, said it had notified the Department of Minerals and Energy and the National Union of Mineworkers of the incident.
