Trapped miners dug out by hand

HANOI - Rescuers digging with their hands saved 17 workers from a collapsed coal mine in northern Vietnam, but four others died.

Rescuers lifted all the survivors trapped 80m underground in the Mong Duong mine after a working chamber was flooded by water, said a Mong Duong Coal Company official in Quang Ninh province, 200km northeast of Hanoi.

Early last month, a methane explosion killed eight workers in a mine in the same province.

The official said rescuers dug with their hands to reach the trapped workers because many tunnels had been mined in preparation for expansion.

"We thought we were dead," said worker Vu Van Duong, one of the survivors.

Duong, trapped with five other workers in one mine section, told the Tuoi Tre newspaper they lit their torches and wrote their last wills.

- REUTERS