In India, relief on a war footing for workers stuck in a tunnel

There is great excitement near the site, where relatives and families of the workers are gathered waiting for a happy outcome.

The chief minister of the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand, Pushkar Singh Dhami, said relief efforts were "on war footing", with "doctors, ambulances, helicopters and a field hospital".

Rescuers are equipped with stretchers with wheels to extract these exhausted men through a large steel tube with a length of 57 meters through the rubble.

Bulldozers and excavators have been working since November 12, the date of the collapse of this tunnel under construction in the state of Uttarakhand, to drill through the debris of earth, rocks and concrete in order to pass it through.

“We have been practicing how to get them out safely,” Atul Karwal, head of the National Disaster Response Force, told reporters on Thursday.

After days of slow progress, a sudden and rapid breakthrough occurred on Wednesday before being slowed to just 12 meters from the goal.

"The remaining 10 to 12 meters... we don't know what can happen but we are ready to face it," Mr Karwal said. “If all goes well, the operation will be completed this evening,” he added, specifying that the trapped workers “are keeping their spirits up”.

Eye contact

Visual contact with the trapped workers was established for the first time on Tuesday, thanks to an endoscopic camera sent by rescuers through the pipe through which air, food and water are regularly delivered to the trapped workers .

Workers have ample space, measuring 8,5 meters high and extending about two kilometers long.

From the start, rescue efforts were complicated and slowed by falling debris and successive breakdowns of drilling machines crucial to rescuing workers.

In the event that the route through the main tunnel entrance was impossible, rescue workers began dynamiting and drilling at the other end of the unfinished tunnel, which is almost 500 meters long.

Preparations have also been made to dig a vertical shaft directly above it, which appears risky.

Although trapped, the workers have ample space, measuring 8,5 meters high and stretching about two kilometers long.

The Silkyara tunnel is part of the Char Dham highway project, dear to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, designed to improve connections with four Hindu sites, among the most important in the country, and also with the border regions of China.

Accidents on major infrastructure sites are frequent in India.

In January, at least 200 people were killed in flash floods in Uttarakhand, a disaster that experts have partly blamed on overdevelopment.