STRAITS TIMES

GENERAL SANTOS (Philippines) - Two Filipinos were buried alive while searching for wartime Japanese treasure that has already claimed dozens of lives, police said yesterday.

One other treasure hunter was injured when an 8-m-deep tunnel they were digging caved in on Tuesday in this southern Philippine city. Six others managed to struggle to safety just before the tunnel collapsed.

Police quoted the survivors as saying that the two men who were killed had reported finding a chest they suspected contained the treasure.

They were trying to break it open when the collapse occurred.

Thousands of Filipinos have been digging for decades in various places across the Philippines in search of the so-called Yamashita's treasure, the existence of which has never been proven.

The treasure hunt was triggered by rumors that Japanese General Tomoyuki Yamashita, hanged in 1946 as a war criminal, had looted the national treasuries of the South-east Asian countries that Japan conquered during World War II.

Supposedly, the general buried the booty in the Philippines.
'Yamashita's treasure' claims two more lives
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