Indian rescuers on Tuesday pulled out all 41 construction workers trapped for 17 days inside a collapsed tunnel in the Himalayas, hours after drilling through the debris of rock, concrete and earth to reach them.

The evacuation of the men – low-wage workers from some of India’s poorest states – began more than six hours after rescuers broke through the debris in the tunnel in Uttarakhand state, which caved in on Nov. 12.

They were pulled out on wheeled stretchers through a 90 cm (3 feet) wide steel pipe, with the entire process being completed in about an hour.

“Their condition is first-class and absolutely fine … just like yours or mine. There is no tension about their health,” said Wakil Hassan, a rescue team leader.

The first to be evacuated, a short man wearing a dark grey winter jacket and a yellow hard-hat, was garlanded with marigold flowers and welcomed in traditional Indian style inside the tunnel by state chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami and federal deputy highways minister V.K. Singh.

Read also: After machines fail, ‘rat miners’ to help rescue 41 men stuck in Indian tunnel

Some walked out smiling and were hugged by Dhami, while others made gestures of thanks with clasped hands or sought blessings by touching his feet. All were garlanded and also presented with a white fabric stole by Dhami and Singh.

“I want to say to the friends who were trapped in the tunnel that your courage and patience is inspiring everyone,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi posted on social media platform X.

“It is a matter of great satisfaction that after a long wait these friends of ours will now meet their loved ones. The patience and courage that all these families have shown in this challenging time cannot be appreciated enough.”

Federal road transport and highways minister Nitin Gadkari thanked rescue workers and said in a post on X that a “safety audit of the tunnel will also be done now”.

Rescue clinched by ‘rat miners’

Ambulances that had lined up with lights flashing at the mouth of the tunnel transported the workers to a hospital about 30 km (18 miles) away.

Local residents gathered outside the tunnel set off firecrackers, distributed sweets and shouted slogans hailing Mother India.

The 41 men have been getting food, water, light, oxygen and medicines through a pipe, but efforts to dig a tunnel to rescue them with high-powered drilling machines were frustrated by a series of snags.

Government agencies managing the unprecedented crisis had on Monday turned to “rat miners” to drill through the rocks and gravel by hand from inside the evacuation pipe pushed through the debris after machinery failed.

Read: Rescuers drill to send more food to trapped workers in Indian tunnel

The miners are experts at a primitive, hazardous and controversial method used mostly to get at coal deposits through narrow passages, and get their name because they resemble burrowing rats.

The miners, brought from central India, worked through Monday night and finally broke through the estimated 60-metres of rocks, earth and metal on Tuesday afternoon.

The tunnel is part of the $1.5 billion Char Dham highway, one of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s most ambitious projects, aimed at connecting four Hindu pilgrimage sites through an 890- km network of roads.

Authorities have not said what caused the cave-in but the region is prone to landslides, earthquakes and floods.

Israeli forces and Hamas fighters largely held their fire on Tuesday following the extension of a four-day ceasefire in Gaza by at least two extra days to allow for the release of more hostages.

With both sides expressing hope of further extensions, mediator Qatar hosted the spy chiefs from Israel’s Mossad and the United States’ CIA at a meeting to “build on progress”, a source briefed on the visits told Reuters.

A US official confirmed that CIA Director William Burns was in Doha “for meetings on the Israel-Hamas conflict including discussions on hostages”, without elaborating.

The truce, which began on Friday, has brought the first respite to the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip in seven weeks, during which Israel had bombed swathes of the territory into a desolate moonscape.

Palestinians walk at the site of Israeli strikes on houses, in Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip November, 21, 2023. PHOTO: REUTERS

Although conditions on the ground in Gaza remained largely peaceful on Tuesday, Israel’s military said three explosive devices had been detonated near its troops in two different locations in the northern Gaza Strip, “violating the framework of the operational pause”.

In one of the locations, gunmen opened fire on the soldiers who returned fire and that “a number of soldiers were lightly injured”. No further details were immediately available.

Earlier, a single column of black smoke could be seen rising above the obliterated wasteland of the northern Gaza war zone from across the fence in Israel, but for a fifth day there was no sign of jets in the sky or rumble of explosions.

Both sides also reported some Israeli tank fire in the Sheikh Radwan district of Gaza City in the morning, but there were no reports of casualties. Israel said its troops had been approached and fired a warning shot.

On alert

Israeli soldiers operate in the Gaza Strip during a temporary truce between Israel and Hamas. PHOTO: REUTERS

Lieutenant-General Herzi Halevi, chief of Israel’s armed forces, told a press briefing that the military remained on alert in Gaza and was prepared to continue fighting.

“We are using the days of pause within the framework to learn, to bolster our readiness and to approve future operational plans,” he said.

Since the truce started on Friday, Hamas has released 69 hostages – 50 Israeli women and children, including some toddlers, as well as 19 foreigners, mainly Thai farmworkers.

In return, Israel has released 150 security detainees from its jails, all women and teenagers.

Israel has said the truce could be prolonged as long as Hamas continues to release at least 10 Israeli hostages per day. But with fewer women and children left in captivity, keeping the guns quiet beyond Wednesday could require negotiating to free at least some Israeli men for the first time.

“We hope the occupation (Israel) abides (by the agreement) in the next two days because we are seeking a new agreement, besides women and children, whereby other categories that we have that we can swap,” Hamas official Khalil Al-Hayya told Al Jazeera late on Monday.

A released Palestinian prisoner reacts after leaving the Israeli military prison, Ofer, near Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank November 28, 2023. PHOTO: REUTERS

Qatar’s foreign ministry said it was now trying to secure a further extension based on Hamas releasing more hostages.

Israel has vowed to annihilate Hamas after its gunmen burst across the border fence and went on a rampage, killing around 1,200 people and seizing 240 captives.

Since then, Gaza health authorities deemed reliable by the United Nations say more than 15,000 people have been confirmed killed in Israel’s bombardment, around 40% of them children, with many more dead feared to be lost under rubble.

More than two-thirds of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have lost their homes, with thousands of families sleeping rough in makeshift shelters with only the belongings they could carry.

Drone footage on Tuesday showed hundreds of Gaza residents queuing for water, petrol and natural gas.

Burying the dead

Residential buildings, destroyed in Israeli strikes during the conflict, lie in ruin in southern Gaza City November 26, 2023. PHOTO: REUTERS

Many are using the truce to return to abandoned or destroyed homes, like Abu Shamaleh, who was picking through the rubble of his flattened home in Khan Younis, looking for anything recoverable in the masonry.

He said 37 family members had been killed and that there was no machinery to excavate the body of a cousin still buried in the ruins.

“The truce is the time to lift the rubble and search for all the missing people and bury them. We honour the dead by burying them. What use is the truce if the bodies remain under the rubble?” he said.

Among Israeli hostages yet to be freed was 10-month-old baby Kfir Bibas, along with his brother Ariel, 4, and their parents Yarden and Shiri, bundled from a kibbutz by gunmen on Oct 7.

Yarden’s sister told reporters relatives had learned the family would not be in the group to go free on Tuesday. Israeli officials said they believed the family was being held by a group other than Hamas.

Eitan Yahalomi, 12, walks with his mother at the Kerem Shalom border crossing, after being released from Gaza. PHOTO: REUTERS

“Kfir… is a child who still doesn’t even know how to say ‘Mommy’,” Jimmy Miller, a cousin, told Channel 12 TV. “We in the family are not managing to function… The family hasn’t slept for a long, long time already – 51 days.”

When the war resumes, Israel has made clear it intends to press on with its assault from the northern half of Gaza into the south. US. officials said they have told their ally to be more careful protecting civilians as its forces press on.

Israel’s siege has led to the collapse of Gaza’s health care system, especially in the north where no hospitals remain functioning. The World Health Organization said more Gazans could soon be dying of disease than from bombing.

There were already a very high number of cases of infants suffering from diarrhoea, said WHO spokesperson Margaret Harris: “No medicines, no vaccination activities, no access to safe water and hygiene and no food.”

Indian rescuers broke through rocks and debris on Tuesday to reach 41 construction workers trapped in a collapsed tunnel in the Himalayas for 17 days.

The process of pulling out the 41 labourers, one at a time on wheeled stretchers through a narrow pipe 90 cm (3 feet) wide, was due to begin soon, officials said.

Three teams, each of four rescuers, would first enter the area where the men are trapped to prepare them to be pulled, said Syed Ata Hasnain, a member of the National Disaster Management Authority that is overseeing rescue efforts.

“We have been involved in this for more than 400 hours and are taking all safety precautions until the end,” he told reporters in New Delhi, adding it would take three to five minutes to remove each of the 41 trapped labourers.

The men, low-wage workers from India’s poorest state, have been stuck in the 4.5 km (3 mile) tunnel in Uttarakhand state, in northern India, since it collapsed on Nov. 12.

They have been getting food, water, light, oxygen and medicines through a pipe but efforts to dig a tunnel to rescue them with high-powered drilling machines were frustrated by a series of snags.

Read also: After machines fail, ‘rat miners’ to help rescue 41 men stuck in Indian tunnel

Government agencies managing the unprecedented crisis turned on Monday to “rat miners” to drill through the rocks and gravel by hand from inside a 90 cm (3 feet) wide evacuation pipe pushed through the debris after machinery failed.

The miners are experts at a primitive, hazardous and controversial method used mostly to get at coal deposits through narrow passages, and get their name because they resemble burrowing rats.

The miners, brought from central India, worked through Monday night and finally broke through the estimated 60-metres of rocks, earth and metal on Tuesday afternoon.

“Work of laying pipes in the tunnel to take out workers has been completed,” Uttarakhand state chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami said on the X social media platform, thanking the Hindu deity, Baba Baukh Nag Ji, as well as the millions of Indian who prayed for the men and the tireless rescuers.

“Soon, all the labourer brothers will be taken out.”

Ambitious project

Dozens of rescue workers with ropes, ladders and stretchers entered the tunnel and 41 ambulances were lined up outside to take the 41 men to a hospital about 30 km away.

Helicopters were on standby there to fly workers to a larger hospital in the city of Rishikesh in case any of them needed specialist attention.

A makeshift medical facility with 10 beds and oxygen cylinders was also set up inside the tunnel for those who might need emergency care on site, officials said.

Some rescue workers in hard hats made victory signs and posed for pictures. Others carried marigold garlands to welcome the workers out in traditional Indian style.

Relatives of the trapped men, who have been camping near the site, were taken inside the tunnel with luggage, ready to accompany the men to hospital.

“As he comes out, my heart will revive again,” the father of a trapped worker, who give his name as just Chaudhary, said of his son, Manjeet Chaudhary.

An ambulance goes inside a tunnel where rescue operations are underway to rescue trapped workers in Uttarakhand, India, November 28, 2023. PHOTO: REUTERS

Villagers also gathered outside the tunnel, some singing Hindu devotional songs and raising slogans in praise of the Hindu god Lord Ram on hearing news of the breakthrough.

Others gathered on nearly slopes hoping to catch a glimpse of the men as they are brought out.

The men have been getting cooked food since a lifeline pipe was pushed through last week, including flat breads, lentils and vegetable curry.

More than a dozen doctors, including psychiatrists, have been at the site, talking to the men through the pipe and monitoring their health.

They were advised to do light yoga exercises, walk around in the space they have been confined to, and keep speaking to each other.

Read: Rescuers drill to send more food to trapped workers in Indian tunnel

The tunnel is part of the $1.5 billion Char Dham highway, one of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s most ambitious projects, aimed at connecting four Hindu pilgrimage sites through an 890- km network of roads.

Authorities have not said what caused the cave-in but the region is prone to landslides, earthquakes and floods.

The tunnel did not have an emergency exit and was built through a geological fault, a member of a panel of experts investigating the disaster has told Reuters.

The Char Dham project has faced criticism from environmental experts and some work was halted after hundreds of houses were damaged by subsidence along the route.

The government has said it employed environmentally sound techniques to make geologically unstable stretches safer.

It also ordered the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) to audit 29 tunnels being built across India.