Russia calls off search for trapped gold miners
Al Jazeera
A landslide in Russia’s Amur region pinned the miners more than 120 metres underground.
Russian emergency services have called a halt to an operation to rescue 13 men trapped in a gold mine in the far east of the country.
The operator of the Pioneer gold mine announced the decision on Monday, two weeks after a landslide at the facility in the Amur region near the Chinese border buried the miners more than 120 metres (about 400 feet) underground.
The statement by operator Pokrovsky Mine said search operations showed caverns, where the miners could have been sheltering, were flooded, raising fears the 13 are dead.
It added that the rescue operation had become too dangerous to continue.
“On 1 April, a decision was made to terminate the rescue operation at the Pioneer mine,” the statement said.