LIMA (Reuters) - At least seven workers at a small gold mine in southern Peru have died in what is believed to be an accident, local police reported on Thursday.

       The victims' bodies were discovered 1.5 km (0.93 mile) deep in the mine with injuries to their extremities, local police chief Enrique Felipe Monroy told radio station RPP.

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       Monroy said that initial evidence pointed to a collapse in the mine, in the town of La Rinconada. In the region, hundreds of small mines operate, many of them without proper legal permissions.

       In Peru, the world's second-largest copper producer and seventh-largest gold producer, collapses or accidents are frequent at informal or illegal mines, where workers dig out ore without following safety or environmental regulations.

       Earlier this month, nine security employees of a major gold producer in northern Peru were killed in an armed attack on the mine, which the government and the miner blamed on "criminal gangs" acting on the behalf of illegal miners.

       (Reporting by Marco Aquino; Writing by Kylie Madry. Editing by Gerry Doyle)