Bodies retrieved from mine

Rescuers retrieved a dozen bodies of women buried under tons of mud from a landslide that crashed onto an unauthorised gold mining operation on Indonesia’s Sumatra island, police said yesterday. About 14 women were looking for gold grains Thursday in a pit roughly 2 metres deep at a small and unauthorised traditional gold mine in a remote village of North Sumatra’s Mandailing Natal district when a landslide plunged down surrounding hills and buried them, said local police chief Marlon Rajagukguk. A two-hour search and rescue operation managed to rescue two injured women and pulled the bodies of 12 other women from the rubble, Rajagukguk said. He said authorities have closed illegal gold pits in the area, which was a main source of gold to be panned traditionally by villagers.