Mexican President urges urgent rescue efforts

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Mexican President urges urgent rescue efforts

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has called for increased efforts to save 10 workers trapped in a flooded coal mine.

Four days after the mine flooded in the northern state of Coahuila, relatives of the missing workers were increasingly desperate, fearing time is running out to bring them out.

Nearly 400 soldiers and other personnel, including six military scuba divers, have joined the rescue effort at the site in Agujita.

It has been too dangerous to enter the mine, authorities said.

We need to do everything we can do to find the missing miners, said Lopez Obrador.

I want it to be as soon as possible. Rescuers have been focusing on pumping out water from the mine to make it safe enough to descend into the 60 metre deep shafts.

The governor of Coahuila, Miguel Angel Riquelme, said there had been progress.

Water levels continue to drop, he said.

Larger volumes are being extracted. He said rescuers were ready to enter the mine as soon as the levels drop. Five workers managed to escape from the crudely constructed mine in the initial aftermath of the disaster, but since then no survivors have been found.

The miners had been carrying out excavation work when they hit an adjoining area full of water, according to authorities.

Relatives ''desperate as rescuers work around the clock.

The water in the mine had receded only about 9.5 meters from the initial 34 meters by the end of the day, authorities told relatives.

Liliana Torres, the niece of one of the missing workers, said she had witnessed the relentlessness of rescuers who do not stop all day, but she added that families were increasingly desperate. She said that families joined a mass near their improvised camp in the community of Agujita to pray for the safe return of their loved ones.

The water seen coming from the mine through drainage channels lifted the hopes of relatives praying that the miners are alive inside a pocket of air.

Elva Hernandez, mother-in-law of one of the trapped workers, said that they're still hoping that they're in a higher part of the mine, although there's too much water.

The Coahuila State prosecutor's office said it had interviewed the five workers who managed to escape from the mine.

The Coahuila Attorney-General Gerardo Marquez said they were expelled by a torrent of water.

He said his office had asked for information from the landowner and mine concession holder, but declined to name them.

Coahuila's labor secretary, Nazira Zogbi, said experts had detected a leak coming from nearby mines and were trying to find its exact location so they could stop water from flowing into the area where workers were trapped.

She said a French company provided equipment to assist in the task.

Over the years, a number of fatal mining accidents have occurred in Mexico's main coal-producing region, Coahuila.

In the last year, seven miners died when they were trapped in the region.

The explosion that claimed 65 lives at the Pasta de Conchos mine in 2006 was the worst accident.

After that tragedy, only two bodies were recovered.