A fatal accident occurred on Thursday at a large copper mine owned by Chile's state-owned copper company Codelco.

A fatal accident occurred Thursday at a large copper mine owned by Chile's state-owned Codelco, marking the second copper mine fatality reported in Chile, the world's largest copper producer, in less than two weeks. Chile's emergency services said the accident happened at the Radomiro Tomic copper mine, about 40 kilometers north of Calama, killing one person, and the circumstances and cause are still under investigation. Codelco declined to comment for now. The accident follows the death last week of a worker during equipment maintenance at BHP Group's Escondida copper mine, the world's largest copper mine, which was temporarily halted as a result before gradually resuming operations. The Radomiro Tomic mine also experienced a fatal accident in early 2024. At that time, Codelco carried out safety rectification, and the mine was only able to deploy about one-third of its haul truck fleet, dragging down the state-owned copper miner's production recovery plans. This accident comes at a difficult time for Chile's mining industry and may further tighten the global copper market, which is already affected by supply disruptions. Hit by weather and operational problems at several large mines, Chile's copper output fell 13% year-on-year in August to 369,500 tons, the lowest monthly level in more than 15 years.