One body recovered from flooded Indian mine as rescuers search for trapped men
One deceased miner was retrieved from a submerged coal mine in a secluded area of Assam, a northeastern state in India, on Wednesday, two days following the onset of the search for nine men trapped underground.
Officials and a state minister mentioned that the mine, which has a depth of 300 feet and consists of various underground passages, likely flooded on Monday morning after the workers encountered an underground water source.
The magnitude of the flooding posed challenges to the rescue efforts on Tuesday. However, skilled divers re-entered the mine early Wednesday and successfully recovered a body, according to Assam's chief minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma, on X.
Authorities have indicated that this mine operates illegally.
"We couldn't see the body due to complete darkness inside; we located it by touch, which allowed us to bring it out," one of the divers recounted to a local news outlet after the recovery. The military has sent in divers, helicopters, and engineers to aid the rescue operations in the hilly Dima Hasao district of Assam.
"It's hard to predict how long the rescue will take because we've been informed that there are small openings within the mine," stated H P S Kandhari, a commandant from the National Disaster Relief Force, the federal organization tasked with such missions, in an interview with news agency ANI.
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