By Maxwell Akalaare Adombila and Christian Akorlie

ACCRA, Jan 19 (Reuters) - A Ghanaian small-scale miners'

association on Sunday said soldiers killed nine unarmed people

at an AngloGold Ashanti ( AU ) mine on Saturday night, while the

army said seven illegal miners had been killed in a firefight.

Kofi Adams, local chairman of the Ghana National Association

of Small Scale Miners, told Reuters that nine people had been

killed and fourteen severely injured in the incident at the

Obuasi gold mining site in the West African country's Ashanti

Region.

He said the people had not been armed.

Earlier, Ghana's armed forces said that about 60 illegal

miners carrying locally manufactured rifles and other weapons

breached the mine's security fence at around 11:00 pm (2300 GMT)

on Saturday and fired on a military patrol deployed there,

leading to a shootout.

"This is unprecedented (and) it's difficult to

understand why this happened," Adams said, noting that in the

past, trespassers on the site had been scared off with warning

shots.

Ghana's President John Dramani Mahama ordered an

immediate investigation into the incident, the presidency said

in a statement on Sunday, calling it "tragic".

The government has asked AngloGold Ashanti ( AU ) to cover the

medical expenses of the injured and the cost of burials, the

presidency's statement said.

AngloGold Ashanti ( AU ) could not immediately be reached for

comment.

The Johannesburg-listed miner owns the Iduapriem and

Obuasi mines in southern Ghana. The two mines produced more than

490,000 ounces of gold last year.

(Writing by Portia Crowe in Dakar;

Editing by Gareth Jones and Nia Williams)