Over 50 feared dead in Myanmar landslide

Search operation underway at the Myanmar mine. Pic/AFP

More than 50 people are feared killed after a landslide in northern Myanmar engulfed jade miners while they were sleeping, local police said Tuesday, the latest deadly accident in a notoriously dangerous industry.

Dozens die each year in landslides caused by jade mining, a notoriously corrupt and poorly regulated industry concentrated near the country's border with China. Local police described a freak accident in Kachin state on Monday night so big it created a huge "mud lake" that buried the miners as well as some 40 vehicles.

"Fifty-four people are mis-sing in the mud," a duty officer from Hpakant township police station told AFP, asking not to be named, adding that only two bodies had been recovered so far. "There's no way they (the missing) could have survived." The Ministry of Information confirmed the accident and number of missing, adding that the area was mined by Myanmar Thura Gems and Shwe Nagar Koe Kaung companies.

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