Dig for bodies of 83 dead in Tibetan mine landslide
Nightmare dig for entire camp of gold miners wiped out by landslide in Tibetan mountains
Only two bodies have been found so far at a Tibetan mine where a massive landslide wiped out a camp of 83 mine workers on Friday, state media reported. There were no survivors.
Rescuers pulled the bodies out of debris yesterday evening - 36 hours after the landslide - at the Jiama gold and copper mine in Maizhokunggar county, 68 kilometres east of the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, Xinhua reported.
The workers' tents were buried under a mass of rock, mud and debris three kilometres wide and an average of 30 metres deep.
Snow, sub-zero temperatures and further minor landslides hampered rescue efforts at the site, which state media says is located at an altitude of more than 4,600 metres, making it one of the world's highest mines. About 300,000 cubic metres of landslide debris - just 15 per cent of the total - had been removed by noon yesterday.
The Tibet autonomous region government said at a press conference yesterday that the identities of all the missing, including two women, had been confirmed.
Two were Tibetans and the rest Han Chinese, mostly migrants from the southwestern provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan.
Fourteen came from Xishui county in northern Guizhou, Xinhua quoted the government of Zunyi, a municipality that oversees the county, as saying.