Three people have been reported killed in an avalanche in northeastern India News

Rescue operations continue as nine more people remain trapped in a flooded Assam coal mine.

Three miners are believed to have died in a flooded coal mine in the northeastern Indian state of Assam, while rescue efforts are underway to rescue nine others.

Local authorities in Assam’s mountainous Dima Hasao district said on Tuesday that rescue teams had found three bodies but were yet to recover them. On Monday, 12 miners were trapped due to flooding in the mine.

The Indian military said in a statement that it had deployed divers, helicopters and engineers to help rescue the trapped people.

“The mine was flooded yesterday – the source was internal. They (miners) must have hit some water channel and the water came out and flooded it,” Dima Hasao district police chief Mayank Kumar told Reuters news agency.

Assam’s Mines Minister Kaushik Rai said the workers were “trapped 300 feet (91 meters) underground after water seeped from a nearby disused mine”.

“We are mobilizing resources to rescue them,” he said.

Photos posted by the military on social media show rescuers standing outside a large, vertical mine with ropes, cranes and other equipment.

In eastern and northeastern India, workers mine coal in often dangerous conditions “rat hole” mines in mountainous areas. After extraction, the coal is placed in boxes and lifted to the surface by pulleys. Accidents are common in these illegal mining operations.

In one of the biggest disasters, in 2019 at least 15 miners were buried after being flooded by a nearby river while working in an illegal mine in the neighboring state of Meghalaya.