A landslide in a jade mine in northern Myanmar has killed at least 113 people. (Reuters)
Jade mine landslide in northern Myanmar killed at least 113 people, including more for fear, authorities said Thursday after a pile of mine waste collapsed in a lake, triggering a wave of mud and water that buried many workers.
Miners were picking up stones in the jade-rich Hpakant region of Kachin when the “mud wave” crashed on them after heavy rain, the fire department said in a statement. article on Facebook.
Rescuers recovered 113 bodies, the department said, but others were missing.
“Other bodies are in the mud,” Tar Lin Maung, a local information ministry official, told Reuters by phone. “The numbers will go up.”
Fatal landslides and other accidents are common in the poorly regulated mines of Hpakant, which attract poor workers from all over Myanmar, but it has been the worst in more than five years.
A hundred people were killed in a collapse in 2015, which reinforced calls to regulate the industry.
The media has reported dozens of people killed in the region in recent years, many of whom are independent “jade pickers” who clean up the tailings – the tailings from mining – in search of stones that have been missed by the big boys. operators.
Video footage on social media showed frantic miners running to escape as a huge pile of black garbage cascaded into a turquoise lake, causing a tsunami-like wave of mud.
The photos showed rows of corpses arranged on a hill, covered with tarpaulin.
Maung Khaing, a 38-year-old local miner who witnessed the accident, said he was about to take a picture of the precarious trash mound that looked like it was going to collapse when people started shouting “run, run!”.
“Within a minute, everyone at the bottom (of the hill) just disappeared,” he told Reuters by phone. “I feel empty in my heart. I still have goosebumps … There were people stuck in the mud who cried for help but no one could help them.”
Than Hlaing, a member of a local civil society group that helped with the aftermath of the disaster, said the people killed on Thursday were freelancers who were picking up trash left by a larger mining company. She said that around 100 people were still missing and 30 had been hospitalized.
The government of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi pledged to clean up the industry when he came to power in 2016, but activists say little has changed.
Official jade sales in Myanmar amounted to 671 million euros ($ 750 million) in 2016-2017, according to data released by the government as part of an extractive industries transparency initiative.
But experts believe that the true value of the industry, which exports mainly to China, is much greater.
Than Hlaing said a local official had warned people not to go to the mine on Thursday due to bad weather.
“There is no hope for families to be compensated because they were independent minors,” she said, “I see no way out of this kind of cycle. People take risks, go to landfills because they have no choice. “
