Three miners are feared dead, and nine others remain trapped inside a flooded coal mine in Assam’s hilly Dima Hasao district in northeastern India. Rescue operations are ongoing as authorities and the military work to save the trapped miners.
Local officials confirmed on Tuesday that three bodies have been spotted inside the flooded mine, though recovery efforts have not yet succeeded. The incident occurred on Monday when water inundated the mine, trapping 12 workers inside.
According to district police chief Mayank Kumar, the flooding was caused by miners accidentally striking an underground water channel. “The mine got flooded yesterday — the source was internal. They [the miners] probably hit some water channel, and water came out and flooded it,” Kumar told Reuters.
The Indian military has deployed divers, helicopters, and engineers to assist with the rescue efforts. Assam’s Mines Minister, Kaushik Rai, said the workers are feared to be trapped approximately 300 feet (91 meters) below the surface. “We are mobilizing resources to rescue them,” he added.
Photos shared by the Indian Army on social media show rescue workers equipped with ropes, cranes, and other tools at the edge of the vertical mine shaft.
The mine’s flooding highlights the ongoing dangers of coal extraction in India’s northeastern states, where miners often work in unsafe conditions in “rat hole” mines. These small, narrow mines are common in hilly regions, and workers use rudimentary methods to extract coal, hoisting it to the surface using pulleys.
Accidents in such illegal mining operations are frequent. One of the most significant incidents occurred in 2019 in neighboring Meghalaya, where 15 miners were trapped and killed after water from a nearby river flooded an illegal mine.
