100 die in Myanmar mine disaster

Yangon, November 22: At least 100 people have died in a huge landslide in a remote jade mining area of northern Myanmar, officials said today, as search teams continued to find bodies in one of the deadliest disasters to strike the country’s shadowy jade industry.
Those killed were thought to have been mainly itinerant miners, who scratch a living scavenging through mountains of waste rubble dumped by mechanical diggers used by mining firms at the centre of a secretive multi-billion dollar jade industry in war-torn Kachin state.
Yesterday’s massive landslide crushed dozens of flimsy shanty huts clustered on the barren landscape, home to an unknown number of people.
The disaster happened at about 3.30 am local time (02.30 IST) and lasted just a couple of minutes, according to Zaw Moe Htet, a small scale local gems trader whose village overlooks the devastated area in the Hpakant mining area.
“Even people living in villages further away could hear the cries of those who rushed to the scene,” he told AFP.
Video footage of the area shot yesterday shows men carrying several bodies slung in blankets watched by a crowd of local people in a dusty plain near the village of Sai Tung.
Nilar Myint an official from the local administrative authorities in Hpakant told AFP that rescue teams have so far found 97 people killed in the landslide.
Rescue operations continue with the Myanmar Red Cross, army, police and local community groups, but officials say they have little hope of pulling people alive from the rubble.
“We are seeing only dead bodies,” said Nilar Myint.
She added that because the men were mostly migrant workers, authorities were struggling to identify any of those killed.