Mexican army divers have rescued a miner from a flooded underground tunnel two weeks after he was first trapped.
Francisco Zapata Nájera, 42, was stuck 300m (985ft) below ground after an embankment collapsed at the gold mine in the northern Mexican state of Sinaloa.
Video of the rescue shows him standing in waist-deep water, telling his rescuers that he never lost faith during his ordeal.
The search continues for another miner who is still missing.
Twenty-five workers were inside the gold mine when the tailings dam – a structure which holds mining waste – burst on 25 March.
Twenty-one managed to get out, but four were trapped.
José Alejandro Cástulo was rescued after five days under ground, and another miner died, but it took rescuers a full 13 days to locate Francisco Zapata.
Following more than 300 hours of searching, divers finally spotted the blinking of the miner’s torch light, which Zapata had turned on and off to alert them to his location.
“How are you, how are you?” rescuers asked as they reached him.
Once they had identified themselves as specialised military divers, they tell the miner that “your torchlight helped us a lot”.
“It guided us,” one of the divers added.
“I didn’t lose faith, I didn’t lose faith,” Zapata told his rescuers.
While Zapata appears visibly relieved in the footage, his ordeal was not yet over.
Due to the flooding in the tunnel leading to his location, the divers could not immediately extract him.
Instead, they left him behind with water, cans of tuna and energy bars – and a promise to return soon.
After 20 more hours in which the rescue teams used pumps to lower the water level in the flooded tunnels, Zapata could finally be taken to the surface.
Wrapped in a thermal blanket and sitting on an electric cart he emerged from the mine on Wednesday and was taken by helicopter to hospital, where he was able to reunite with his family.
Doctors said he was frail but stable and would receive the necessary treatment.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum praised the Mexican army and Zapatero’s faith and resilience, which she said had made the “astounding rescue” possible.
SOURCE: BBC NEWS
