Colombia's rescue teams continue seeking for trapped miners

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe said on Thursday that the rescue teams continue the rescue works to find the miners trapped after an explosion in a mine in Antioquia department.

Uribe said the rescue teams are looking for the workers, but they are not optimistic of finding them alive due to the strength of the explosion which occurred on Wednesday night.

At least 16 miners died and 72 are still trapped in San Fernando mine in a rural zone of Amaga municipality in Antioquia.

The rescue teams said it could take them three days to rescue the miners.

"My heart is in Amaga. The truth is that all my life I have felt a great closeness with that community. I cannot hide it: I have a lot of pain for knowing that 72 people are trapped there. A difficult situation. We have rescued 16 corpses," Uribe said.

Antioquia's governor Luis Alfredo Ramos said the mine was one of the safest in the country and the explosion apparently occurred for gas accumulation.

Ramos said the explosion occurred while the workers were changing shifts, and the possibility of rescuing them from the mine, of 1,500 meters deep, is not much.

Source: Xinhua