The rescue of 41 construction workers who have been trapped in a collapsed tunnel in Uttarkashi in northern India for nearly two weeks ran into another delay during what was described as the final phase of digging to reach them, officials said.
The platform of the drilling machine got destabilized while piercing through rock debris, and technicians need to fix it before the rescue operation can resume, Kirti Panwar, a spokesperson for the Uttarakhand state government, said.
The workers have been trapped since Nov. 12, when a landslide caused a portion of the 4.5-kilometer (2.8-mile) tunnel they were building to collapse about 200 meters (650 feet) from the entrance.
Engineers have been digging for days to drive a steel pipe through 57 metres (187 feet) of earth, concrete and rubble that has divided the men from freedom since a portion of the under-construction tunnel caved in on 12 November, in the state of Uttarakhand.
After days of painfully slow progress, engineers with a powerful drilling machine made a sudden rapid advance on Wednesday, before being slowed, with just 12 metres to go, when metal rods blocked the route.
Uttarakhand chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami said the work was on a “war footing”, with a “team of doctors, ambulances, helicopters and a field hospital” set up.
