The rescue team dug several feet underground to retrieve the bodies of the miners who got trapped after a partial collapse of the El Teniente copper mine in Chile.

The body of the fifth and last missing miner was found on Sunday, days after the collapse of a tunnel at the world’s largest copper mine in Chile.

“Today we finally found [dead] the last of the missing workers,” Aquiles Cubillos, prosecutor for Chile’s O’Higgins region, told reporters.

Rescuers dug two dozen meters (78 feet) of underground passages to retrieve the bodies of the miners.

How did the miners get trapped?

On Thursday, a part of the El Teniente copper mine collapsed after a 4.2 magnitude tremor, which initially killed one person and injured nine others.

Following the tremors and the partial collapse of the El Teniente tunnel, which trapped five mine workers, operations were suspended at the tunnel.

It is still unknown whether the tremor was due to a natural quake or because of mining activity.

A team of 100 rescue workers searched for the missing miners.

State-run mining firm Codelco, which operates the tunnels, discovered the first trapped worker on Saturday and the other four on Sunday.

Codelco Chairman Maximo Pacheco said the company would convene international experts to probe and determine “what we did wrong.”

“This tragedy hits us hard,” Pacheco told reporters at Codelco’s offices in the city of Rancagua, near the mine in central Chile.

Chile’s mining industry is one of the safest in the world, with a fatality rate of 0.02% last year, according to the National Geology and Mining Service of Chile.

Edited by: Rana Taha

DW News