Three primary school children died after being buried by sand
and rocks while searching for jade at a pit in northwest China's
Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, police said on Wednesday.
The children went missing on Sunday afternoon and their families
reported their disappearance to police in Langru town, Hotan
county, on Monday morning.
After receiving reports that the students carried shovels when
leaving home, the police on Monday searched places around the town
where people hunted for jade and found a sand and rock collapse in
a pit left by an excavator.
The police found the bodies and confirmed after investigation
that the children were killed by the collapse.
Details on the ages and gender of the children were
unavailable.
Xinjiang produces up to 300 tons of Hotan Jade a year, 20
percent of which is pure white nephrite. A kilogram of white Hotan
Jade can sell for more than 100,000 yuan (12,500 U.S. dollars), and
prices have been rocketing because of a sharp decrease in
output.
Lured by the possibility of fast money, jade hunters from all
over the country swarm around the the river bed of the Yurungkax
River during summer before the river freezes over in autumn.
(Xinhua News Agency December 13, 2007)