Landslide at Myanmar jade mine kills 15 ‘scavengers’

A landslide killed at least 15 people in northern Myanmar yesterday, with 45 others injured after the latest disaster in the Hpakant jade mining region.

Miners searching for the precious mineral were buried by muddy earth from a slope that collapsed, said Kyaw Swar Aung, the administrator of Hpakant in the northern Kachin state.

The search in the area of Lone Khin was called off for the day after 15 bodies were pulled from the mud and 45 injured were taken to a nearby hospital, Mr Swar Aung said.

“We stopped the search at 5.30pm and will continue tomorrow,” he said, adding that authorities had appealed to people in the area to report anyone who was still missing.

Mr Swar Aung said the affected miners were not working for a company. Informal jade scavengers, or hand-pickers, are frequently caught up in landslides in the poorly regulated mining area.

In May, 14 miners were killed in a similar collapse in the same area, and more than 100 people were killed in a landslide in Hpakant in 2015.

Han Thar, secretary for the ruling National League for Democracy party in Hpakant, said more people might still be buried.

“There might have been about 100 people,” Mr Thar said. “When the land fell into a pond, the workers in the water were buried by soil.”

Environmental advocacy group Global Witness put the value of jade production in Myanmar at about US$31 billion (Dh114bn) in 2014. Experts say most of the stones are smuggled to China.