Three feared dead as India deploys divers, helicopters to rescue trapped miners

15 Labourers Trapped in Flooded Coal Mine in Assam's Dima Hasao. Photo: Anamika Dutta @AnamikaDutta77

Three miners were feared dead inside a flooded coal mine in a remote district of India's north-eastern Assam state, authorities said on Tuesday, as rescue teams worked through the night to try to reach a total of nine men trapped inside.

Three bodies have been spotted by rescue teams but have not yet been recovered, the local government said in a statement.

Army teams deployed divers, helicopters and engineers to help rescue the nine men, who have been trapped since Monday in the mine in Assam's hilly Dima Hasao district, the army said in a statement.

"The mine got flooded yesterday — the source was internal. They (the miners) probably hit some water channel and water came out and flooded it," Mayank Kumar, district police chief in Dima Hasao told Reuters.

Kumar said rescue teams from the army, national and state disaster relief forces were working to reach the trapped miners.

Photographs shared by the army on social media showed rescue workers with ropes, cranes and other equipment standing at the edge of a large, vertical mine.

Coal mine-related disasters in the remote northeastern part of India are not uncommon. In one of the biggest disasters, in 2019, at least 15 miners were buried while working in an illegal mine in the neighbouring state of Meghalaya after it was flooded by water from a nearby river.