According to an emergency official, at least one person has been killed, and many are missing following a landslide at a jade mine in northern Myanmar.

"About 70 to 100 people are missing in a landslide that occurred around4 am," rescuer Ko Ny said.

"We sent 25 injured to hospital while we found one dead," he added.

He added around 200 searches and rescue personnel, some in boats attempting to remove victims from a lake.

According to the Myanmar Fire Services Department's Facebook page, rescue operations involved fire stations in Hpakant and neighboring Lone Khin and the Lone Khin Regional Fire Department.

Each year, dozens of miners perish in unsafe conditions in Myanmar's jade quarries, an opaque and poorly regulated industry.

Landslides are prevalent in this impoverished and remote region, which resembles a lunar landscape due to the extent to which it has been transformed by substantial mining enterprises with scant concern for the environment.

Following a 2016 ban, several massive mines have shuttered and are no longer supervised, allowing numerous independent miners to resume. These individuals originate from underprivileged ethnic backgrounds and operate nearly covertly in abandoned industrial areas.

In 2020, heavy monsoon rains resulted in the greatest mining tragedy in history, with 300 miners buried following a landslide in the Hpakant mountain, the industry's heartland near the Chinese border.

Myanmar earns a large amount of money from the vast occurrence of the valuable stone in its subsoil, which is particularly prized in China.

Global Witness stated in a study issued in 2021 that the February coup d'état killed any prospect of improving the industry under Aung San Suu Kyi.