A landslide occurred near a jade mine in Myanmar on Saturday night, leaving 104 villagers dead and many others still missing.

On Saturday, a mound around 60 meters (200 feet) high collapsed at 3 a.m. while the villagers were fast asleep. The huts of the victims, which stood in between two mounds of dump soil, were buried underneath the earth. Out of the 70 huts, only five were unaffected by the landslide, according to a Global New Light of Myanmar report cited by CNN.

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Jade businessman Brang Seng said the deadly landslide happened in the Kachin State of Hpakant in northern Myanmar. Community leader Lamai Gum Ja described how the collapsing earth covered the homes of the villagers at the bottom of the mine dump, The New York Times (NYT) reports.

On Sunday, search and rescue troops began digging through the rubble in hopes of finding survivors, the state-run media firm adds.

Kachin is home to best quality jade in the world. Just last year, the jade business generated around US$31 billion, but Hpakant itself it still a very poor town. Advocacy group Global Witness said most of the income from the jade industry goes to the pockets of those connected with the country's former military officials, the report explains.

"Large companies, many of them owned by families of former generals, army companies, cronies and drug lords, are making tens or hundreds of millions of dollars a year through their plunder of Hpakant," the NYT quotes Global Witness Asia Director Mike Davis' statement."Their legacy to local people is a dystopian wasteland in which scores of people at a time are buried alive in landslides."

Myanmar authorities had reportedly already warned the workers not to stay on the mine site. The environment has already become hazardous due to the improper practices of mining firms, and the recent landslide in the jade mine is only one of the several fatal accidents that occurred in the last few months.

TagsMyanmar, Jade Mining, Myanmar landslide