RUSSIA: Fears were growing last night that 13 miners trapped 800 metres underground may have perished before a rescue tunnel dug into the rock could reach them.
Five days after an underwater lake flooded a shaft at Zapadnaya mine in southern Russia, trapping 46 of the 71 miners inside, rescue workers are racing to save the remaining 13 men before their air runs out or water levels rise again.
After tunnelling to within three metres of where the men were thought to be sheltering from the freezing water, they drilled a 3.2cm hole.
Yet no signs of life emerged, and hopes for their survival sank.
Teams had been furiously drilling through the rock after a signal on Saturday that the missing 13 men where still alive.
Rescuers are now planning to blast a 1.4 metre high and 2.5 metre wide hole in the rock. Three five-man teams of rescuers, who have been rehearsing the operation above ground, will then enter the tunnel. The original hole was intended to prove the rescuers were drilling in the right direction.
"Maybe we'll punch through and find them standing there, alive," said Mr Andrei Khudyakov, the head of the rescue team at the mine.
He said his team had plugged the hole in the shaft through which the icy water was flowing. Tonnes of rock, soil and concrete pillars were dumped inside to seal the shaft.