its president MexicoAndrés Manuel López Obrador, yesterday Sunday, asked rescue teams to do “more” to rescue ten workers who have been trapped tens of meters below the ground in the northeastern part of the country since Wednesday after collapse and flooding. in three coal mines.

“We must continue to work to save the miners. We must continue what we are going to do and do more,” said the head of state during a visit to the disaster site in the state of Coahuila.

“I want this to happen as soon as possible,” he added to reporters.

“I will go and see how the rescue operation is going. I will go and see the situation with my own eyes,” the President said before heading to the site, to the community of Las Sabinas.

Nearly 400 members of the rescue teams continued yesterday to rescue 10 workers who were trapped Wednesday afternoon when three adits collapsed and flooded at a depth of 60 meters.

The president said Saturday was a “decisive” day for the rescue operation: “we will find out if there is any possibility that the divers can enter (the mine) safely.”

But yesterday, the divers were unable to enter the adits, as the water level (34 meters) dropped only to 9.5 meters.

Divers “say they don’t know when” they will be able to dive, Alicia Huerta, niece of one of the stranded miners, told AFP.

Rescue teams use about twenty pumps. However, experts fear that the water level could rise due to runoff from a nearby mine.

Repeated accidents

On Saturday evening, the relatives attended a church service near the makeshift camp where they have been since Wednesday, not far from the rescue operation cordoned off by the authorities.

The only coal mining state in Mexico, Coahuila, is accustomed to such tragedies. In June 2021, seven workers died when an underground gallery collapsed.

On February 19, 2006, 65 miners were killed when pocketed gas exploded in Pasta de Conchos, a mine owned by the Grupo México consortium.

Sixteen years later, 63 of the 65 bodies still lie in his galleries.

For 16 years, families have been “requested to take action” to prevent such tragedies, but “their pleas have not been heard,” said the Society of Jesus, a Mexican Jesuit order, assuring that it accompanies relatives in their quest to return. justice from international organizations.

In October 2010, in Chile, 33 workers miraculously emerged alive from a copper mine 700 meters below the surface in the Atacama Desert after being trapped for 69 days by a collapse.

^{Source: APE-MEB, AFP.}