At least eleven miners were rescued Sunday from under the rubble of the Qixia gold mine in China, where a large explosion trapped around 20 men hundreds of meters underground on January 10.
After two weeks of particularly difficult drilling operations, enormous obstacles finally fell to the bottom of the well, which made it possible to bring up to the surface a dozen men, extremely weakened.
Two days earlier, the authorities had announced that it would take an additional fifteen days to clear the “1,300 cubic meters of debris, weighing nearly 70 tons.
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Thanks to a mechanical cable, the relief workers had been able to deliver food and medicine to the miners in the past few days. They had brought up written messages reporting several injuries and a disturbing rise in groundwater. The clearing of the area gives hope for a rescue of the rest of the miners in the hours or days to come. About ten men are still stranded underground.