The first 18 workers have been rescued from a tunnel in India after being trapped for more than two weeks.
Indian network NDTV reported that all 41 workers should be released within two hours.
The workers got trapped on 12 November, when a landslide caused a portion of the 2.8-mile tunnel they were building in Uttarakhand state to collapse about 200m (650ft) from the entrance.
Having survived on food and oxygen supplied through narrow steel pipes, the workers will be taken to a makeshift health centre inside the 13m (42ft) wide tunnel, officials said.
One of the trapped workers is checked out after he was rescued from the collapsed tunnel site— (via REUTERS)
“Soon all the laborers brothers will be taken out,” Pushkar Singh Dhami, top official in Uttarakhand state, posted on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
Kirti Panwar, a state government spokesperson, said about a dozen men had worked overnight to dig through rocks and debris, taking turns to drill using hand-held drilling tools and clearing out the muck in what he said was the final stretch of the rescue operation.
Rescuers resorted to manual digging after the drilling machine broke down irreparably on Friday while drilling horizontally from the front because of the mountainous terrain of Uttarakhand.
Rescue personnel work at the collapsed under construction Silkyara tunnel— (AFP via Getty Images)
The machine bored through about 47m (nearly 154ft) out of approximately the 57-60m (nearly 187-196ft) needed, before rescuers started to work by hand to create a passageway to evacuate the trapped workers.
Most of the trapped workers were migrant labourers from across the country. Many of their families have travelled to the location, where they have camped out for days to get updates on the rescue effort and in hope of seeing their relatives soon.
The breakthrough in the 17 days of struggle to free the men came as “rat-hole mining” work commenced on Monday to manually drill and clear the debris to reach the trapped workers.
Two dozen “rat-hole” miners arrived from Delhi and Jhansi cities to enter the tunnel and dig it manually after an auger drilling machine broke down multiple times.
These miners get their name from their technique of extracting coal through narrow pits and crevices in the northeastern state of Meghalaya.
More to follow...
