Nicaragua miners rescued after slide

BONANZA, Nicaragua — Rescue workers and trapped miners alike frantically dug away at opposite sides of rock and mud that blocked a Nicaragua gold mine, finally succeeding in freeing at least 20 men even as efforts to reach those still missing continued Saturday.

Antonio Diaz said the miners tried to cheer each other up inside the shaft, attacking the slide with their picks and shovels by the light of helmet lamps. But after 24 hours, they began feeling hungry and some started losing hope.

“I kept thinking I was too young to die and above all, I thought about my two daughters,” the 32-year-old miner said from a hospital bed in the town of Bonanza, near the El Comal gold and silver mine.

He said the miners finally cut a hole through the blockage and started shouting, but at first there was no answer.

“Hours later, someone heard, and when he answered us we felt life coming back into our bodies,” Diaz said. “God had answered our pleas to keep living.”

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