At least 54 jade miners in Myanmar are feared to have died after they were engulfed by a landslide “mud lake” as they slept.

In one of the worst disasters to hit Myanmar’s notoriously treacherous jade mining industry, a mud filter collapsed at a mine in Hpakant in Myanmar’s Kachin State on late Monday night, causing a landslide that hit the miners’ sleeping quarters. It buried the sleeping men and 40 pieces of heavy machinery.

On Tuesday morning, a rescue operation began at the mine, which is about 30m deep. However, none of the 54 miners, most of whom were migrant workers, are thought to have survived the incident and, by Wednesday, only three bodies had been retrieved from the mud.

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“They won’t survive. It is not possible because they are buried under mud,” Tin Soe, a local official, told Reuters. The two companies operating the mine were named as Shwe Nagar Koe Kaung and Myanmar Thura.

Myanmar’s shadowy jade industry, which is highly unregulated and controlled by the military and private conglomerates, has long been condemned for prioritising profit over safety, and dozens die every year in deadly landslides, particularly when monsoon season hits. Last year dozens of miners died in a landslide at another jade mine in Hpakant and statistics from 2017 showed almost 80 officially recorded deaths, though the unofficial toll is assumed to be higher.

A Global Witness report from 2014 put the value of jade production in Myanmar at about $31bn, nearly half of Myanmar’s GDP that year. However, little of the profits trickle down into the country and most of the jade is sold or smuggled into China, where the stone is in high demand.

Paul Donowitz, campaign leader for Myanmar at environmental advocacy group Global Witness described the jade industry as “corrupt to the core”, adding: “The government is incapable or unwilling to regulate the military-linked companies, cronies, drug lords, armed groups and shadowy Chinese business interests controlling the trade.

“This preventable tragedy once again underscores the urgent need to bring accountability to the country’s jade industry and to completely shut down large-scale jade mining operations which continue to kill hundreds every year, fuel violent armed conflict and devastate the local environment.”