Team who made breakthrough hope acclaim will lead to more awareness of their value and the risks of their work

The “rat hole” miners who finally rescued 41 Indian workers who had been trapped in a mountain tunnel for more than two weeks on Tuesday have said the operation involved 26 hours of digging by hand, as they sought to highlight the harsh conditions and lack of dignity faced by manual labourers in India.

Munna Qureshi, 33, was the first of the 12-man team to break through a wall of rubble and lay eyes on the 41 workers who had been trapped in the collapsed tunnel in the Himalayan mountains since 12 November.

Workers pulled up through escape pipe after 17 days stuck in Silkyara-Barkot tunnel in Himalayan mountains

All 41 Indian labourers have been rescued after a gruelling 17 days trapped in a collapsed tunnel in the Himalayan mountains.

The dramatic scenes of the first men emerging on stretchers from the entrance of the Silkyara-Barkot tunnel came after more than 400 hours, during which the rescue operation hit multiple obstacles, delays and false promises of imminent rescue.

Dozens of labourers have been trapped in the Silkyara-Barkot tunnel in the mountainous state of Uttarakhand for more than two weeks

The fate of 41 Indian workers trapped in a collapsed mountain tunnel hung in the balance on Monday as rescuers began a “risky” attempt to drill vertically down to try to pull them out.

The labourers have been trapped in the Silkyara-Barkot tunnel in the mountainous state of Uttarakhand for more than two weeks after a landslide caused the entrance of the tunnel to collapse and become blocked with a wall of concrete rubble, debris and metal.

Efforts to free 41 workers stuck in tunnel for almost two weeks hit another setback as earth-boring machine breaks down

Indian rescue workers have brought in a new digging machine to open a vertical shaft to free 41 men trapped inside a collapsed road tunnel, after efforts via another route hit a snag metres away from them.

In the latest setback in attempts to rescue the increasingly desperate workers, who have been trapped for almost two weeks, engineers driving a metal pipe through 57 metres (187ft) of rock and concrete ran into metal rods and construction vehicles buried in the earth.

Drilling machine stalls metres away from where men have been trapped for 13 days since roof collapse

Hopes are high that in a few hours’ time the 41 workers who have been trapped in a tunnel for 13 days in north India will emerge to freedom and fresh air.

The mood at the scene – where heavy machinery and a more than 200-strong rescue team have been toiling without a break – was upbeat after a monumental and torturous operation.

Ambulances are on standby in the state of Uttarakhand to take the workers for treatment, as families of trapped describe feeling optimistic

The rescue operation to free 41 construction workers trapped for nearly two weeks in a collapsed tunnel in northern India has run into trouble in the final stretch of digging.

According to officials, some blades of the drilling machine were damaged by a metal object lodged in the debris.