Landslide in Myanmar (Burma) on Sunday, 22 November, 2015

Landslide in Myanmar (Burma) on Sunday, 22 November, 2015

A landslide near a jade mine in northern Myanmar killed up to 70 people and left more than 100 missing, most of them villagers sifting through a huge mountain of tailings and waste, a community leader and businessman said Sunday. The collapse occurred Saturday afternoon in Kachin state, said Brang Seng, a jade businessman, describing rows of bodies pulled from the debris. "There were more than 70," he said. "This is awfully bad." More than 100 others were missing, said Lamai Gum Ja, a community leader who also has interests in the mining business. Myanmar only recently started moving from a half-century of dictatorship to democracy. Hpakant, the epicenter of the country's jade boom, remains desperately poor, with bumpy dirt roads and constant electricity blackouts. The region bordering China is home to some of the world's highest quality jade, bringing in billions of dollars a year, though researchers say most of that money goes to individuals and companies tied to Myanmar's former military rulers. Informal miners risk and often lose their lives digging through scraps of the giant mines. "Large companies, many of them owned by families of former generals, army companies, cronies and drug lords are making tens or hundreds of millions of dollars a year through their plunder of Hpakant," said Mike Davis of Global Witness, a group that investigates the misuse of revenue from natural resources. He said that "scores of people at a time are buried alive in landslides."

Myanmar landslide: 90 dead at Kachin jade mine

Image copyrightGetty Images

Image captionAt least 90 bodies have been recovered

A landslide at a jade mine has killed at least 90 people in northern Myanmar, witnesses say.

The victims were buried when a vast heap of waste material, discarded by the mining companies, collapsed in Kachin state, Burmese media reported.

Many of the dead were scavengers living on or near the waste dumps, who search through the debris in the hope of finding fragments of jade to sell.

The state of Kachin produces some of the best jade in the world.

The landslide in Hpakant happened on Saturday, and there are reports of dozens more missing.

A huge rescue operation is underway with the Myanmar Red Cross, the army, police and local community groups all at the scene trying to dig people out of the earth.

Image copyrightAFP

Image captionReports say dozens are still missing

Image copyrightMinzayar

Image captionScores of itinerant workers are based at many of Myanmar's jade mines

The state-run Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper said that many of the dead were asleep in huts when the landslide happened.

"We are seeing only dead bodies and no one knows how many people live there," local official Nilar Myint told the AFP news agency. He said that only one person had been pulled alive from the rubble, but had died soon afterwards.

However their efforts have been hampered by bad weather.

It is unclear what caused the collapse of the heap of waste material.

Communications with this part of Kachin State are poor and details are hard to confirm.

In a report in October, advocacy group Global Witness said that the value of jade produced in 2014 alone was $31bn (£20.4bn) - the equivalent of nearly half the country's GDP - yet hardly any of the money is reaching ordinary people or state coffers.

Local people in mining areas accuse the mining industry of a series of abuses, including poor on-site health and safety and frequent land confiscations.

Many jade mining areas have been turned into a moon-like areas of environmental destruction as huge diggers churn the earth in search of the translucent green stones.