<div><span style="font-size: 1rem;"><b>Indian rescuers led by “rat miners” drilled through rocks and debris on Tuesday to reach 41 construction workers trapped in a collapsed tunnel in the Himalayas for 17 days.</b></span><br></div><div><br></div><div>The process of pulling out the 41 low-wage workers from India’s poorest states, one at a time on wheeled stretchers through a pipe 90 cm (3 feet) wide, was due to begin soon, officials said.</div><div><br></div><div>“Work of laying pipes in the tunnel to take out workers has been completed,” Uttarakhand state chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami said on the X social media platform, thanking the Hindu deity, Baba Baukh Nag Ji, as well as the millions of Indian who prayed for the men and the tireless rescuers.</div><div><br></div><div>“Soon, all the laborer brothers will be taken out.”</div><div><br></div><div>The men have been stuck in the 4.5km tunnel since it collapsed on Nov. 12.</div><div><br></div><div>They have been getting food, water, light, oxygen and medicines through a pipe but efforts to dig a tunnel to rescue them with high-powered drilling machines were frustrated by a series of snags.</div><div><br></div><div>Government agencies managing the unprecedented crisis turned on Monday to “rat miners” to drill through the rocks and gravel by hand from inside a 90 cm (3 feet) wide evacuation pipe pushed through the debris after machinery failed.</div><div><br></div><div>The miners are experts at a primitive, hazardous and controversial method used mostly to get at coal deposits through narrow passages, and get their name because they resemble burrowing rats.</div><div><br></div><div>The miners, brought from central India, worked through Monday night and finally broke through the estimated 60-meters of rocks, earth and metal on Tuesday afternoon.</div><div><br></div><div>Dozens of rescue workers with ropes, ladders, and stretchers entered the tunnel and 41 ambulances were lined up outside to take the 41 men to a hospital about 30 km away.</div><div><br></div><div>Some rescue workers in hard-hats made victory signs and posed for pictures.</div><div><br></div><div>Relatives of the trapped men, who have been camping near the site, gathered outside the tunnel with luggage, ready to accompany the men to hospital.</div><div><br></div><div>“As he comes out, my heart will revive again,” the father of a trapped worker, who give his name as just Chaudhary, said of his son, Manjeet Chaudhary. - Reuters&nbsp;</div><div><br></div><div>bnbd24/fas</div>