ABIDJAN (Reuters) – A bridge on the railway linking Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso collapsed on Tuesday and it will be several months before the trade route between the two countries is fully restored, said Sitarail, a unit of the Bollore group.

Nobody was injured when a bridge over the River Nzi close to Dimbokro in central Ivory Coast collapsed and officials are inspecting the damage before starting repairs, Sitarail said in a statement.

The railway was built by French colonizers to link the port city of Abidjan with Niamey, Niger, via the Burkina Faso capital, Ouagadougou.

Burkina Faso exports cotton and manganese to Abidjan along the 1,260-km (780-mile) railway and imports oil, cement, merchandise and fertilizer to the town of Kaya.

Sitarail said the railway carried 200,000 people in 2015 and 900,000 tonnes of freight.

(Reporting by Ange Aboa; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Peter Cooney)