"At Least Seven Dead, 10 Missing as Landslide Hits Mine in Myanmar’s Kachin" 7 June 2024

A landslide occurred at a rare earth mining site in Pang War town, Kachin State on Tuesday morning, killing at least seven people and leaving at least 10 missing, according to Kachin-based environmental activists and family members of the victims. The landslide occurred at mining plot No. 3 on a mountain in Pang War, a town in Chipwi Township in the state’s remote northeast...

Sources said authorities and other responsible persons at the mining site have not yet been able to confirm the exact number of people still missing. They estimate that at least 10 to 17 individuals remain unaccounted for...Recovering the bodies of those who perished is a challenging task due to the massive amount of earth covering them. Authorities have struggled to identify the seven bodies that have been found so far, explained a Kachin activist closely monitoring the aftermath of the landslide...

On Thursday, a Kachin-based media outlet reported that two Chinese citizens who owned the mining business were among those killed, but The Irrawaddy has not been able to independently verify the claim...

To operate the rare earth mines, businesspeople—mostly Chinese nationals—make deals with the junta’s military and the leaders of its allied militia groups in the Chipwi and Pang War areas...In Kachin’s Special Region 1, mainly controlled by militias aligned with the junta’s military, the number of mining sites increased by more than 40 percent between 2021 and 2023, according to a recent report by Global Witness...