The official Xinhua News Agency said the workers in Lhasa’s Maizhokunggar county worked for a subsidiary of the China National Gold Group Corp., a state-owned enterprise and the country’s largest gold producer.
The disaster is likely to inflame critics of Chinese rule in Tibet who say Beijing’s interests are driven by the region’s mineral wealth and strategic position and come at the expense of the region’s delicate ecosystem and Tibetans’ Buddhist culture and traditional way of life.
The reports said at least two of the buried workers were Tibetan while most of the workers were believed to be ethnic Han Chinese, a reflection of how such large projects often create an influx of the majority ethnic group into the region.
More than 1,000 police, firefighters, soldiers and medics have been deployed to the site, about 70 kilometers (45 miles) east of Lhasa, the regional capital. They conducted searches armed with devices to detect signs of life and accompanied by sniffer dogs, reports said.
Around 30 excavators were also digging away at the site late Friday as temperatures fell to just below freezing.