India rescuers hit snags in two-week bid to free 41 tunnel workers

Indian rescuers began digging a vertical shaft to free 41 workers trapped inside a collapsed road tunnel for two weeks. In the latest setback in attempts to rescue the increasingly desperate workers, engineers driving a metal pipe horizontally through 57 metres of rock and concrete ran into metal rods and construction vehicles buried in the earth.

Just nine metres from breaking through, drilling with a giant earth-boring machine has stalled while using gas-cutting tools to remove thick metal girders from inside the confined pipe, just wide enough for a man to crawl through is tricky. Ambulances are on standby and a field hospital has been prepared to receive trapped workers.