Rescue teams engaged in extricating the eight trapped workers under a partially collapsed tunnel of the SLBC here are cutting down a Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM) to make way to reach the stranded persons, officials said on Saturday. The rescue efforts are on in full swing, a week after the engineers and labourers were trapped under the collapsed roof of the Srisailam Left Bank Canal (SLBC) tunnel.

Teams comprising personnel from NDRF, Army, state-run miner Singareni Collieries, rat miners and other agencies are working continuously, Nagarkurnool Superintendent of Police Vaibhav Gaikwad said.

“The rescue operation is going on… (Saturday) morning a team went inside (the tunnel)… The process of dewatering, removing debris is also going on simultaneously”, the SP told PTI.

The parts of TBM are also being cut to clear the path ahead, he added.

“Whatever obstacles are coming in between (to reach the spot where they can search for trapped persons), we have to remove them.” According to an official, the damaged part of the conveyor belt in the tunnel was expected to be repaired on Saturday.

Meanwhile, scientists from the National Geophysical Research Institute (NGRI) used Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) and detected some “anomalies” inside the tunnel.

However, it is unclear what these anomalies represent, given the challenging conditions inside the tunnel, including mud and saturated water bodies, official sources said.

Rescue personnel need to examine these “anomalies” further to identify them, they added.

Eight persons, working on the SLBC tunnel project, were trapped after a portion of the tunnel collapsed on February 22.

A team of over 500 skilled personnel from the Army, Navy, Singareni Collieries and other agencies were involved in the rescue ops over the past few days.

The trapped persons have been identified as Manoj Kumar (UP), Sri Niwas (UP), Sunny Singh (J&K), Gurpreet Singh (Punjab) and Sandeep Sahu, Jegta Xess, Santosh Sahu and Anuj Sahu, all from Jharkhand.

Of the eight, two are engineers, two are operators and the remaining four are labourers from Jharkhand.

The two engineers and four labourers are working for Jaiprakash Associates, the contracting firm of SLBC tunnel project.

State Irrigation Minister N Uttam Kumar Reddy, Excise Minister Jupally Krishna Rao, Chief Secretary Santhi Kumari left for the accident site from here, sources said.

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