New Delhi — A group of 41 men were rescued Tuesday from a partially collapsed Himalayan highway tunnel in northern India's Uttarakhand state after they were trapped for 17 days, India's transportation minister announced. The breakthrough, after a series of failed attempts, was achieved by a team of "rat miners" digging manually through the huge mound of debris that filled a section of the tunnel on Nov. 12.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on social media that the success of the rescue was "making everyone emotional."

"I want to say to the friends who were trapped in the tunnel that your courage and patience is inspiring everyone. I wish you all well and good health," Modi said.

"Tireless and sincere efforts by everyone, coupled with prayers from all, have made this operation possible," Nitin Gadkari, the minister of road transport and highways, said on social media. "The dedicated endeavors of the rescue teams have yielded favorable results."

The rescued men were greeted with garlands of marigold flowers. Outside the tunnel, firecrackers went off and people cheered.

The rat-hole miners, experts in a traditional method of coal mining still used widely in India, were called in only on Monday after more than two weeks of failed attempts to reach the stranded workers using heavy machinery.

The team of 24 rat miners started work Monday to drill through the debris pile manually and create a narrow passageway to the trapped men. Each trapped worker was pulled out individually on a wheeled stretcher.

Uttarakhand's top elected official, Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami, in a post on social media, lauded the "tireless work of all the rescue teams engaged in the rescue operation."

Ambulances that had been waiting outside the tunnel entrance took the men to a hospital for medical checks.

Rescuers had tried since the collapse, believed to have been triggered by a landslide in the unstable Himalayan region, to drill through the debris in the collapsed tunnel using a large auger machine, but it became stuck in the rubble on Friday and had to be broken down and removed — an operation that took several days itself.

The men were trapped in the under-construction highway tunnel they were building in Uttarakhand's Silkyara district, but a small pipe was drilled into the tunnel on the first day of the collapse, enabling rescuers to provide the workers with sufficient oxygen, food and medicine. 

Last week, they then managed to force a slightly wider pipe in through the rubble, which meant hot meals and a medical endoscopic camera could be sent through, offering the world a first look at the trapped men inside.

What is rat-hole mining?

Rat-hole mining is a primitive, officially banned method of manual coal extraction that involves digging very narrow, vertical shafts into the earth through which miners descend to extract coal. 

Miners descend into the pits using ropes or bamboo ladders, without safety gear. Coal is then manually extracted using primitive tools such as pickaxes, shovels and baskets. The tunnels used are generally only big enough for a single miner to descend at a time, for which reason rat miners often include women and children.

Experts say the method is damaging to the environment and has been linked to soil erosion, deforestation, acidification of rivers and disruption of local ecosystems.    

India's National Green Tribunal, a powerful judicial body tasked with environmental protection, banned rat-hole mining across the country in 2014 due to its environmental impact and unsafe labor conditions, but it remains prevalent in parts of India in the absence of viable alternative livelihoods for local populations.

In:
• India
• Rescue
• Himalayas