A LANDSLIDE killed at least 15 people in northern Myanmar on Saturday, with 45 others injured after the latest disaster in the Hpakant jade mining region, a local official said.

Miners searching for the precious mineral were buried by muddy earth from a slope that collapsed, said Kyaw Swar Aung, the administrator of Hpakant, in the northern Kachin state.

The search in the area of Lone Khin was called off for the day after 15 bodies were pulled from the mud and 45 injured people were taken to a nearby hospital, he said.

“We stopped the search at 5:30 p.m. and will continue tomorrow,” he said, adding that authorities had appealed to people in the area to report anyone still missing.

He said the affected miners were not working for a company. Informal jade scavengers, or hand-pickers, are frequently caught up in landslides in the poorly regulated mining area.

In May, at least 14 miners were killed in a similar collapse in the same area, and more than 100 people were killed in a landslide in Hpakant in 2015.

(SD-Agencies)