Rescuers fight weather and conditions to find them missing after the storm kills six people in a distant mine.
Heavy rain forced Indonesian rescuers to suspend efforts to find 14 missing gold miners after a remote landslide east of the country killed six of their colleagues.
Authorities reported Monday that the weather and difficult terrain were preventing the search for workers in the easternmost region of Papua, Indonesia.
Heavy rain caused landslides and flooding on Friday, near a small mine run by residents of the Alphak Mountains in West Papua, Disaster Management Bureau spokesman Abdul Muhari told Reuters news agency.
The storm wiped out temporary shelters used by miners, killing at least six people and injuring four, he reported.
“The upstream floods collided with a temporary residential area for traditional gold miners at 9pm (1200 GMT),” Muhari said in a statement.
Searches to find the missing miners are “not only hampered by bad weather, but also damaged roads, mountainous areas and bad weather.
He pointed out that it took 12 hours to travel to the site from the nearest town.
Authorities said they plan to resume searches for missing people on Tuesday.
Tricky regulations
Unauthorized mines are common across the nations of the mineral-rich Southeast Asian archipelago. There, abandoned sites attract locals hunting leftovers without proper safety equipment.
This makes it difficult for authorities to regulate them due to remote and difficult operations.
There were no official indications of the mine’s legal status. Sabaldin emphasized that the focus is on evacuating the victims.
Indonesia tends to landslides during the rainy season, usually from November to April.
A landslide caused by heavy rain in an illegal gold mine in Western Sumatra in September killed 13 people and injured 12 people.
At least 27 people were killed in a landslide near an illegal gold mine on Indonesia’s Sulawesi Island in July.
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