African Queen begins drilling at King Solomon in Mozambique

African Queen Mines (CVE:AQ) announced Friday it has commenced its 2011 core drilling program at its King Solomon project, located in the western Tete Province of Mozambique.
The drill program will cover 3,000 metres of the King Solomon project, which is subject to a 2009 earn-in and joint venture agreement with Swiss-based OptiMetals Trading.
The agreement covers exploration, development and exploitation of approximately 230 square kilometres in the centre of the Mesoproterozoic Fingoe Belt.
African Queen currently holds a 51% interest in the property, the prospecting license for which is valid until May 2015, and can earn up to an 85% interest by funding additional prescribed stages through feasibility.
At the end of May, the company began the drilling of the first drill hole, MW07.
“We are very excited to be resuming drilling at King Solomon at this time, as we look forward to building upon the encouraging results already generated by our initial reconnaissance drill program last year," said CEO Irwin Olian.
MW07 is approximately 50 metres down dip from drill holes MW01 and MW02, both of which had encountered encouraging mineralization in the company's 2010 reconnaissance core drilling program.
The Vancouver, B.C.-based company has identified mineralization consisting of gold-copper-silver, with associated zinc, lead and iron in the area. There has also been anomalous content of bismuth found, African Queen said.
"The exploratory and geophysics work we have recently completed suggests that the area to the West may host significantly richer copper, gold and silver mineralization over wider zones and we are looking forward to results from upcoming drill testing of this area along strike, and in several new zones which we have identified," Olian added.
African Queen, which is also exploring properties in Kenya, Ghana, Botswana and Namibia for diamonds, gold and other metals, said upcoming holes at the property will be drilled between 120 and 200 metres in depth, and will largely be focused to the west of the 2010 program.