Myanmar halts landslide rescue efforts
Print Edition
Rescuers in northern Myanmar called off their search for workers feared buried in a jade mine landslide, police said yesterday, with no missing people or bodies recovered.
A wall of rocks, mud and debris careered down a hillside on Friday afternoon at Hpakant in Kachin state, the war-torn area that is the epicenter of Myanmar’s secretive multi-billion-dollar jade industry.
Locals reported as many as 50 people might have been buried. But officials played down those numbers, saying only three men had been reported missing.
More than 100 people were killed in the same area in a landslide last month, highlighting the huge risks people take to fuel global demand for jade.
A police officer in Hpakant said rescue efforts were called off because the risk of further landslides was too great.
“The rescue process was stopped this afternoon because there were possible dangers and cracks appearing on the debris dump site,” the officer, who asked not to be named, said. “We haven’t found anybody and we don’t know how many casualties there were,” he added.
Another police officer had earlier said three people were thought to be missing.
The state-run Global New Light of Myanmar reported the same figures yesterday. The paper quoted Tin Swe Myint, head of the Hpakant Township Administration Office, as saying that the landslide took place after most workers had finished work and unlike last month’s tragedy it had not engulfed a row of shanty houses.
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