Myanmar jade mine disaster: Death toll rises

Rescuers Friday pulled several bodies from the scene of a landslide which killed over 160 jade miners in northern Myanmar, many of them migrant workers seeking their fortune in treacherous open-cast mines near the China border.

The disaster - the worst in memory to strike Myanmar's notoriously dangerous jade mines - ocurred on Thursday when a hillside collapsed in heavy monsoon rains. A deluge of mud smothered workers scouring the land for the precious stone - a moment of horror captured on cameraphone footage.

"The search and rescue missions continued today and we now have 166 bodies," the Myanmar Fire Services Department said in a Facebook post, raising the overnight toll by four. The area is close to the Chinese border in Kachin state, where billions of dollars of jade is believed to be scoured each year from bare hillsides by poor migrant workers seeking to strike it rich.

Myanmar is one of the world's biggest sources of jadeite and the industry is supercharged by demand for the green gem from neighbouring China. Some jade brokers suspended online auctions on Thursday, and promised to donate money to their friends who were killed. Scores of miners die every year in landslides and other accidents on unstable, over-excavated mountainsides.