The collapse of an unlicensed gold mine in Indonesia's North Sulawesi province has buried dozens of people, a disaster official said.
Emergency personnel used their bare hands and farm tools in a desperate attempt to reach victims calling for help from beneath the rubble.
Local disaster official Abdul Muin Paputungan said one person was confirmed dead and 14 people with injuries ranging from light to serious had been rescued.
As many as 60 people were buried, he said.
"Unstable soil conditions make us extra careful lifting rocks because it can lead to new landslides," Mr Paputungan told The Associated Press.
"We still hear voices crying for help from people beneath the rubble," he said.
"Survivors estimated about 60 people are trapped in the rubble of the mining pit," Mr Paputungan said.
Makeshift wooden structures in the mine in Bolaang Mongondow district collapsed on Tuesday evening due to unstable soil and the large number of mining holes, burying people in the mine pit.
Police, search and rescue agency workers, military and Indonesian Red Cross personnel were all taking part in the rescue effort but the remote location was complicating the operation.
Mr Paputungan said the mine and a village connected to it are in a steep area that can only be reached by foot. Earth-moving equipment and ambulances cannot reach the location, he said.
Source: PA
Comment: Update: The New York Times on the 5th of March reports:
A weeklong, round-the-clock search for victims of a landslide that may have buried dozens of miners in Indonesia is still underway, a rescue official said Tuesday, as the confirmed death toll rose to 17.
The landslide, which struck on Feb. 26 on the island of Sulawesi, left an unknown number of miners trapped underground in makeshift holes. As of Tuesday, rescue personnel combing the steep jungle terrain with earth movers had found 18 survivors, and the death toll had risen from nine a day earlier.
"We have no exact number of the people down there, or even how many small holes there are," Yusuf Latif, a spokesman for Indonesia's search and rescue agency, said by telephone.
He added that in addition to 17 dead, the authorities had found body parts that they were working to identify.
They were also searching for the owners of about 50 motorcycles that have been parked near the mining site for days, he said.
Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, the spokesman for Indonesia's disaster management agency, told reporters in a WhatsApp message on Monday that local estimates of the number of miners working at the site ranged from about 30 to 100.
Mr. Sutopo said pinpointing the number of miners buried by the landslide had been difficult partly because some might have been trapped in smaller offshoots of the site's primary mining pit.
Death toll from a landslide in a smallholder mining site in Bakan Village, Bolaang Mongondow District, North Sulawesi Province, rose to 27 as of Wednesday morning.
The joint Search and Rescue (SAR) team found another body on Wednesday at 8:18 a.m. local time and sent it to Kotamobagu Hospital for identification.
Tens of gold miners were buried as a mining site collapsed in Bakan Village on February 27, 2019. Eighteen miners survived the disaster.
"Tens of gold miners are buried by a landslide in an illegal gold mining site on February 27, 2019, at 9 p.m. local time," Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, spokesman of the National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB), noted on his Twitter account, last Wednesday.
Deputy for Operation, Search, and Help of the National Search and Rescue Agency (Basarnas) Nugroho Budi Wiryanto had earlier remarked that the SAR team will continue to evacuate those still trapped in the mining site.
"We will continue to evacuate them using heavy duty equipment," he noted.
Wiryanto said he was unaware of the exact number of people still trapped in the mining site.
Comment: Update: The New York Times on the 5th of March reports: Update: ANTARA News on the 6th of March reports: