Watches this Rescue workers near their goal as Chile awaits

Rescue workers near their goal as Chile awaits


Copiapo, Chile (CNN) -- There may be light at the end of a nearly completed tunnel for the 33 men trapped since August 5 almost half a mile below ground, with rescuers expected to reach them within a day, Chile's mining minister said Friday afternoon.
"Hopefully before that," Mining Minister Laurence Golborne told reporters about the time when a rescue drill is expected to pierce the roof of the mine. As of Friday afternoon, it was 40 meters (about 130 feet) away. "Maybe tomorrow morning, early Saturday. We have to wait and see."
Once the mine has been reached, the rescue process could begin within three to four days, Golborne told reporters. But mine engineers must decide first whether they need to encase the shaft with steel tubing to prevent rockfalls and further collapses during the extraction process. "If we do a full casing of the hole, those three to four days could go to eight to 10 days," Golborne told reporters.
One of the rescue coordinators, Rene Aguilar, an engineer for state copper company Codelco, said this week they may encase just the first 100 meters (328 feet) of the shaft, a process that could take just 10 hours.
Before anyone can be rescued, the hole must be widened so that the rescue capsule -- dubbed the Phoenix -- can land cleanly inside the tunnel without getting hung up on obstructions, Golborne said. To accomplish that, explosives will be lowered to the miners for use in widening the shaft, said Golborne, who expressed little concern that the subterranean pyrotechnics would pose any danger to the men.
"We have to take into consideration that we are talking here about miners that have experience, many of them are licensed to use explosives, they know how to manipulate them, they have already made the holes that they need to set the right quantities of explosives. ... So it will be a very controlled explosion that will be made after we break into the tunnel."
Then, authorities will lower a doctor and a rescuer into the chamber, Health Minister Jaime Manalich said. Medical and rescue personnel will be in place to start extracting and treating the miners Monday night, he said.
Once the miners have been extracted, they will undergo about two hours of health checks at a field hospital set up at the mine.
Barring complications, it will take about 24 to 36 hours to remove all the miners through the 2,300-foot hole, Manalich said. They will then be flown by helicopter to a hospital in the town of Copiapo -- approximately a 15-minute flight.
coppied by http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/10/08/chile.trapped.miners/index.html?hpt=T1

Spanish aid workers freed by Al Qaeda in Mali

Enjoy Spanish aid workers freed by Al Qaeda in Mali



MADRID (AFP) - Two Spanish aid workers held hostage for the past nine months by Al Qaeda's North African branch have been freed in Mali, the Spanish government announced Monday.

"Albert Vilalta and Roque Pasqual are free. They have been freed after spending 268 days in the hands of their kidnappers," Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said in a brief televised statement.

The release is "very good news" and "puts an end to a terrorist action which should never have happened", Zapatero said.

Vilalta, 35, and Pascual, 50, who worked for Catalan aid group Accio Solidaria, were kidnapped north of the Mauritanian capital Nouakchott on November 29, along with a third Spaniard, 39-year-old Alicia Gamez, who was released in March.

They were handed over to the North African branch of Osama Bin Laden's terror network, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), who held them in Mali.

Their release follows the August 16 transfer from Mauritania to Mali of the kidnap mastermind, Malian national Omar Sid'Ahmed Ould Hamma, who had been jailed for 12 years by a Mauritanian court.

Hamma has strong ties to AQIM, although not a member of the group himself.

Spanish dailies El Mundo and ABC both reported on Monday that their release was the result of Hamma's transfer and a payment by the Spanish government which El Mundo put at 3.8 million euros ($4.8 million) and ABC at between 5 million and 10 million.

Zapatero made no mention of any ransom in his statement.

"It has been nine months of suffering for them and their families, days of concern and activity by the government, which stepped up the activities of its political, diplomatic and intelligence services to secure their release," he said.

The prime minister "thanked the various governments for their cooperation, especially the governments in the zone in which the kidnapping happened”.

He said the two are to arrive in Barcelona late on Monday on a special flight accompanied by close relatives and Secretary of State for Cooperation Soraya Rodriguez.

A security official in the Burkina Faso capital of Ouagadougou said a helicopter carrying the two freed men had been due there at around 2:00pm (1400 GMT) but "their arrival has been delayed because of a refuelling" stop.

A Malian government minister said the two men were escorted via a specially secured route out of Mali.

"Mali followed the release of the hostages minute by minute, by opening a humanitarian corridor to secure the success of the operation," said the minister who requested anonymity.

He did not say where this route was or where the hostages were.

Mauritania has accused Mali of being soft on AQIM after it released four prisoners in exchange for French hostage Pierre Camatte in February.

The pair were being held by a cell led by Algeria's Mokhtar Belmokhtar, nicknamed "Belawar", who paid Hamma to kidnap them.

While Belmokhtar is considered more a businessman than a religious fanatic, he is believed to be under pressure from a radical branch of AQIM led by another Algerian, Abdelhamid Abou Zeid.

Zeid has overseen the deaths of two Western hostages, Briton Edwin Dyer and Frenchman Michel Germaneau. The latter was killed after a Franco-Mauritanian raid in an attempt to find him, in which seven of Zeid's men were killed.

He is believed to have been demanding the execution of the Spaniards in retaliation for the July 22 military operation.
coppied by http://jordantimes.com/index.php?news=29464