Hopes fading for more than 80 miners

BEIJING (AP):Rescuers digging for victims of a massive landslide at a gold-mining site in mountainous Tibet found one body yesterday, nearly 36 hours after 83 workers were buried in the disaster, Chinese state media reported.

The workers were buried early last Friday when about two million cubic metres of mud, rock and debris swept through the mine and covered an area measuring around four square kilometres.

More than 3,000 rescuers equipped with sniffer dogs and excavators were scouring the high-altitude, mountainous area yesterday but search efforts were slowed after snow started to fall early in the afternoon.

The miners worked for Huatailong Mining Development, a subsidiary of the China National Gold Group, a state-owned enterprise and the country's largest gold producer.

The disaster has spotlighted the extensive mining activities on the Tibetan plateau and sparked questions about whether mining activities have been excessive and destroyed the region's fragile ecosystem.

Criticisms, however, only flashed through China's social media yesterday before they were scrubbed off or blocked from public view by censors.

Beijing says the cause of the disaster is yet to be fully investigated, although state media say the mud slide was caused by a "natural disaster," without giving specifics.