More than a hundred people are missing after the landslide that took place today in a jade mine in northern Myanmar. Rescue teams are working, and so far the body of one victim has been extracted and 25 wounded were recovered, but it is feared that several dozen are missing. A local news site talks about 20 bodies of miners recovered.
Most of the miners working in the mine in the Hpakant area of Kachin state were illegal immigrants.
Accidents in the mines of jade, a gem of which Myanmar is the main producer, are very frequent, so much so that in the state of Hpakant this activity has been banned. But the bans are often ignored, with miners accepting to work in unsafe conditions due to lack of other possibilities and the situation of impoverishment exacerbated by the Covid crisis.
In 2020, over 160 people, mostly migrants, died in another landslide in a mine in Hpakant, and in recent days other miners have been reported missing in another mine.