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Chinese state media reported on Thursday that at least five people were killed and 48 are missing after an open-pit coal mine in northern Inner Mongolia collapsed in a landslide.
Astonishing security camera video of the disaster uploaded to social media showed a massive avalanche of rocks and dirt pouring into the mine pit:
Video footage shows a collapse at a coal mine in northern China’s Inner Mongolia autonomous region, where several people have been killed and dozens are missing.
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Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) February 23, 2023
When the dust settled, the pile of debris covering the mine was over 550 yards wide and 260 feet high.
“I had just started work at 1:15 in the afternoon when I realized that rocks were falling from the mountain. I saw that the situation was getting more and more serious, and an evacuation was organized, but it was too late, the mountain just collapsed,” an injured miner told China’s state CCTV from his hospital bed.
Various Chinese media reports said that over a thousand rescue workers are on site, surveying the area with drones and attempting to locate the missing miners. The rescue effort was halted by another landslide on Thursday.
CCTV said the mine was operated by a small company called Xinjing Coal Mining. The company had not commented on the disaster as of late Thursday morning, but CCTV ominously quoted police officials who said “relevant persons” deemed responsible for the collapse have been “controlled.”
The Associated Press (AP) on Thursday said Xinjing Coal was “cited and fined last year for multiple safety violations ranging from insecure access routes to the mining surface to unsafe storage of volatile materials and a lack of training for its safety overseers.
