Incident at mining complex in Mexico leaves 9 people arrested, says Red Cross

At least nine miners are trapped after an incident at a mining complex in the municipality of Sabinas, Coahuila, in northern Mexico, Red Cross spokesman Nicolas Fuentes told CNN this Wednesday (3).

According to Fuentes, the incident was recorded around 2 pm (local time), when the miners would have found an abandoned tunnel that had water and flooded the area where they were.

One of the miners managed to escape and so far the status of those missing at the mine is not known, Fuentes said.

Red Cross and Civil Protection personnel are already on the scene, the spokesman said. As of Wednesday afternoon, Civil Protection had not made a public statement about the incident.

On Twitter, the Mexican Government’s National Civil Protection Coordination said that President Andrés Manuel López Obrador had instructed the organization’s head, Laura Velázquez Alzú, to travel to the area and coordinate rescue efforts.

For its part, the Mexican National Guard said it had joined the search and rescue efforts at the Sabinas mine, Coahuila, through its Twitter account.

According to information published by Obrador, 92 members of the National Defense Secretariat are at the scene working on the rescue.

At the last moment, the Undersecretary of the National Defense, General Agustín Radilla, informs me that the DN-III plan is applied and that 92 elements of the Secretary of the National Defense with specialists and four canine binomials are in place.

— Andrés Manuel (@lopezobrador_) August 3, 2022

The incident took place in Villa de Agujita, about 300 kilometers north of the state capital, Saltillo, and about 120 kilometers from the US border. Sabinas is part of the so-called Carboniferous Region due to its coal mines.