More than 50 feared dead in landslide at Myanmar jade mine

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

Local police described a freak accident in Kachin state on Monday night was so big that it created a huge "mud lake" that buried the miners as well as nearly 40 vehicles.

Xinhua News Agency cited the Ministry of Information, saying that 54 jade miners went missing after the collapse of a tailing pond in Myanmar's Kachin state.

"Fifty-four people are missing 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 confirmed the accident and number of missing, adding that the area was mined by Myanmar Thura Gems and Shwe Nagar Koe Kaung companies.

Myanmar Thura Gems director Hla Soe Oo told AFP by phone he was en route to the site but did not have further details.

Local media shared images, unverified by AFP, that showed the walls of a mine stretching vertically a couple of hundred meters above a vast pool of mud, revealing only the tops of two yellow excavation vehicles.

Hundreds of onlookers gathered nearby, staring at the disaster site and taking photos with their phones.

Fatal landslides are common in the mines with victims often from impoverished ethnic communities looking for scraps left behind by big firms.

A major landslide in November 2015 left more than 100 dead.

Watchdog Global Witness estimated that the industry was worth about $31 billion in 2014, although very little reaches state coffers.