HPAKANT, Myanmar (AP) — Police in northern Myanmar said Wednesday they have ended efforts to find bodies in a jade mining landslide that killed more than 100 people and highlighted the perilous conditions created by a breakneck effort to dig up the world's richest deposits of the green gem.
Separately, the government of Kachin state in the country's far north has offered compensation of 600,000 kyats ($550) to families of identified victims. The desultory sum reflects the limited resources of a state that is largely locked out of a mining bonanza worth billions.
The collapse early Saturday of a 60 meter (200-foot) mountain of dirt and debris created by industrial jade mining in Hpakant enveloped 70 makeshift huts and killed at least 113 people. Officials have said as many as 100 people are still missing. Many of the dead were itinerant jade pickers and their families who made a living scavenging for scraps of jade in the debris left behind by mining companies.
Hpakant police officer Naing Win said search operations ended on Wednesday morning.
The landslide was the area's worst such disaster in recent memory, but dozens of other people have been killed or maimed in the past year. In January, a landslide of unstable waste earth killed at least 30 jade pickers.
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