PANTUKAN - Rescuers clawed through dirt Saturday in a desperate search for survivors a day after a landslide buried workers in mining tunnels in a gold-rich area in Compostela Valley province in southern Philippines.
But despite their efforts, officials in charge of the rescue warned that they were unlikely to find any more survivors, with at least 21 people still missing from Friday's pre-dawn landslide.
"We are still continuing our search and rescue. But most likely if we don't have any improvement tonight, by tomorrow, we will shift to (body) retrieval operations," said local military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Lyndon Paniza.
As of posting time, rescue operations for the victims in the town of Pantukan had been suspended for the night. The search for them resumes on Sunday.
Officials said that so far, only 3 deaths have been confirmed and 13 people rescued. Paniza said earlier reports that 15 had been rescued were found to be a mis-count.
Officials in the Kingking mountain district where the landslide occurred have classified at least 21 people as missing but Paniza said other victims may also have been buried.
"We are relying on the names given by the district officials. We are hoping that there are no others who were not on that list," he told AFP.
It is difficult to pinpoint exact numbers for the missing because of the transient nature of mining work that draws people into the area.
The pre-dawn landslide covered numerous illegal, small-scale gold mines on the mountainside in Kingking, including mining tunnels, houses, stores and gold processing mills.
Such illegal mining operations, with inadequate safety measures, are common in the mineral-rich but poverty-stricken southern island of Mindanao.
The searchers, including soldiers, civil defence personnel and volunteers from other mines in the area, continued to dig, mostly using shovels and picks, hoping that some people may have survived in their mining tunnels.
The depth of collapsed earth, however, has lowered the chances of finding more survivors, said regional civil defence chief Liza Mazo.
"We are pessimistic. It is difficult (to dig) because the landslide is 15 to 20 metres (50 to 66 feet) deep," she told AFP.
At the Pantukan town hall, which serves as a makeshift command centre for the disaster, helicopters landed and took off regularly, taking officials to the landslide site at Kingking, over an hour's drive away.
Former small-scale miner Danding Labanan said he knew most of the missing and was not surprised by the tragedy.
"That area has long been considered dangerous but the miners wouldn't listen to the authorities so this happened," said Labanan, who now works as a blacksmith forging tools for the miners.
He said mining was likely to continue despite the landslide.
"People won't leave. They have no other lives except mining. I am a blacksmith now, but if an opportunity arose to mine, I would go back to the tunnels," he said.
In the wake of the disaster, provincial Governor Arturo Uy said he would impose a 30-day moratorium on small-scale mining.
Authorities said one person was killed and five others were injured in a landslide in the same area last month, while 21 people died when a similar disaster brought on by heavy rains hit the same location in May 2009.
The mayor of the district where the landslide occurred, Celso Sarenas, said he was helpless to stop people from mining in the disaster-prone site.
"Once, I tried to have the people evacuated. But when my aide went there, they pointed a gun at him. What else can we do?" he said in a television interview.
