(ANSA) - YANGON, DEC 22 - At least 70 people are missing and one has been confirmed dead after a landslide that occurred overnight in a jade mine in northern Burma.
"Between 70 and 100 people are missing in a landslide that occurred at 4" at the Hpakant site in Kachin state, rescuers say.
"We sent 25 wounded to the hospital and found one dead," the sources add.
About 200 rescuers participate in the research, some aboard boats to try to recover bodies from a lake.
In Burma, dozens of miners die every year working in dangerous conditions in the jade quarries, a dull and heavily regulated industry. Landslides are frequent in this poor and difficult to access region, which looks like a lunar landscape since it has been modified by large mining groups without any concern for the environment. Following a moratorium in 2016, many large mines have closed and are no longer monitored, allowing for the return of many independent miners.
Coming from disadvantaged ethnic communities, the latter operate almost clandestinely in sites abandoned by excavators.
Heavy monsoon rains caused the worst disaster of its kind in 2020, with 300 miners buried after a landslide in the Hpakant Massif, the heart of this industry, near the Chinese border.
Burma draws significant income from the massive presence in its subsoil of the precious stone particularly appreciated in China.
The February coup destroyed any possibility of guaranteeing the reform of the sector initiated under Aung San Suu Kyi, according to the surveillance body Global Witness in a report published in 2021. (ANSA).
