Five people have been confirmed dead and as many as fifty moe may be missing following a landslide at a jade mine at Hpakant in Kachin State, Myanmar, on Friday 25 December 2015. The precise number of people involved is unclear because the event happened on a spoil heap where artisanal miners were sifting through tailings from a larger mine in the hope of finding fragments of jade, and the majority of people in this industry are migrant workers from the surrounding countryside, not registered with any local authority.
Rescue workers at the site of the 25 December 2015 Hpakant landslide. Getty Images.
Myanmar is the world's largest producer of jade, though much of this is
produced (along with other precious and semi-precious minerals such as
amber) at unregulated (and often illegal) artisanal mines in the north
of the country, from where it is smuggled into neighbouring China.
Accidents at such mines are extremely common, due to the more-or-less
total absence of any safety precautions at the site. At many sites this
is made worse by the unregulated use of explosives to break up rocks,
often leading to the weakening of rock faces, which can then collapse
without warning.
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