Over 100 miners were unaccounted for yesterday after the roof of an illegal gold mine collapsed in southern Ghana, officials said.

"We cannot tell exactly the number of people who are dead or still trapped because we have not recovered any body yet," Peter Kofi Owusu Ashia, a municipal chief in Dunkwa-on-Offin town told AFP.

"But checking from the logbook 136 illegal miners had reported for work on that Sunday," he said.

Witnesses reported seeing some miners escape before the roof crumbled. Rescue workers were pumping out the water and excavating the pit to try to retrieve any bodies.

The disaster is the second to hit the gold-rich west African country in just about a year. In June last year at least 18 people died, including 14 women, in one of Ghana's worst mining disasters.