83 miners buried near Lhasa

LHASA, Meto Khongkhar area - A major landslide hit a mining area in Tibet on Friday morning, burying 83 workers, local authorities said. The site of the accident is within the Jiama Copper Gold Polymetallic Mine, about 68 kilometers from Lhasa. Two of the buried workers are local Tibetans and others seams to be of Chinese Hun origines, recruited mainly from neighbouring provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan. The victims were workers from Tibet Huatailong Mining Development Co. Ltd, a subsidiary of the China National Gold Group Corporation. The landslide happened on March 29, at about 6 AM, in Meto Khongkhar county of Lhasa. The affected area of the landslide is 3 kilometres long, with about 2 million cubic meters of mud, rock and debris, at an altitude of 4,600 meters. The landslide struck suddenly, bringing massive rocks down to smash the workers' camp area in early morning. Five excavators, five pick-up trucks and an SUV were also buried in the debris. The company's mining permit covers a total area of 144 square kilometres at an altitude of 4,000 to 5,407 meters. First-phase production of the mine started in July 2010 with a total investment of 3.5 billion yuan (558 million US dollars), and the largest copper gold polymetallic mine in Tibet specializes in the exploitation and processing of six metals - namely, copper, lead, zinc, gold, silver and molybdenum. Located within the Gangdise Copper Metallogeny Belt in central Tibet, the Jiama project has been developing amid disputes. Before the mining area was taken over by Huatailong in late 2009, a dozen private miners were caught up in a rat race for the rich ore supplies, ignoring their responsibilities to the local community and environment. Ensuing public complaints forced the regional government to suspend the operations of the private miners and re-examine the local mining industry in January 2010." Rescuers have not yet found survivors 30 hours after a landslide. As the site is at an altitude of more than 4,600 meters, most rescuers have been suffering from slight altitude sickness. Further minor landslides have hampered their efforts. And temperatures as low as minus three degrees Celsius have also affected the sniffer dogs' senses of smell. Miners' survival chances seams to be slim due to the scale of the landslide.