Rescue teams found a body inside a section of a Chilean copper mine that collapsed two days earlier during a moderate earthquake, the mine’s director said Saturday.
Rescuers have been trying to reach five miners who were trapped Thursday evening in the El Teniente mine in central Chile as rocks collapsed around them during a 4.2 magnitude quake. The copper mine is one of Chile’s largest, reports AP.
A spokesman for the rescue team that is trying to drill through 90 metres (295 feet) of rock to reach the miners said the body found on Saturday is one of the five miners who were trapped in the mine. El Teniente Director Andres Music said authorities were still trying to identify the body.
The body of another miner — not one of the five still trapped — identified as Paulo Marin Tapia was found Friday, shortly after the mine’s partial collapse.
Nine other mine workers suffered injuries, said Chile’s National Copper Corp., known as Codelco, describing the incident as a result of “a seismic event.”