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By Tora Agarwala
GUWAHATI (Reuters) -Three miners were feared dead inside a flooded coal mine in a remote district of India's northeastern Assam state, authorities said on Tuesday, and the men were part of a total of nine still trapped as rescue teams worked to reach them.
The mine, in an area controlled by the state government, appeared to be illegal, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said on social media platform X, adding that local police had arrested one person in connection with the case.
Rescuers have spotted three bodies but have not yet recovered them, the local government said in a statement, a day after the nine miners were trapped by heavy flooding that police said was likely triggered underground.
"The well is about 150 feet deep, of which almost a hundred feet is filled with water," Kaushik Rai, a local minister who is at the site, told Reuters.
"Three teams have attempted to enter it since morning and have managed to go as far as 30 to 35 feet."
Police said the flooding likely took place inside the mine.
"They (the miners) probably hit some water channel and water came out and flooded it," Mayank Kumar, district police chief in Dima Hasao said.
Army teams deployed divers, helicopters and engineers to aid rescue efforts in Assam's hilly Dima Hasao district, the army said in a statement.
Rescue teams lowered divers in a container using a pulley into a large shaft that leads to the mine, according to video from news agency ANI, in which Reuters has a minority stake.
Photographs shared by the army on social media showed rescue workers with ropes, cranes and other equipment standing at the edge of a large, vertical mine.
Coal mine-related disasters in the remote northeastern part of India are not uncommon. In one of the biggest incidents, in 2019, at least 15 miners were buried while working in an illegal mine in the neighbouring state of Meghalaya after it was flooded by water from a nearby river.
(Reporting by Tora Agarwala; writing by Shilpa Jamkhandikar; editing by Saad Sayeed and Bernadette Baum)
