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India\u2019s military brought in specialised equipment on Sunday as efforts to free 41 trapped<\/a> workers entered a third week, with digging ongoing in three directions after repeated setbacks<\/a> to the operation.<\/p>\n The Indian Air Force said on Sunday that they were \u201cresponding with alacrity\u201d, as they flew in their third load since the partial collapse of the under-construction Silkyara road tunnel on November 12 in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand.<\/p>\n Rescue officials said they called for a superheated plasma cutter to be brought to the remote mountain location after engineers driving a metal pipe horizontally through 57 metres of rock and concrete ran into metal girders and construction vehicles buried in the earth.<\/p>\n A giant earth-boring machine snapped just nine metres from breaking through.<\/p>\n The plasma cutter will be used to remove the broken giant earth-boring drill and metal blocking the horizontal route, before digging will continue by hand.<\/p>\n Thick metal girders in the rubble are blocking the route, and using conventional oxyacetylene cutters to clear them is tricky from inside the confined pipe, only wide enough for a man to crawl through.<\/p>\n The Air Force said the \u201ccritical\u201d kit came from the country\u2019s Defence Research and Development Organisation, the government\u2019s defence technology research arm, without giving further details.<\/p>\n Vertical drilling has also begun to dig 89 metres downwards, a risky<\/a> route above the men in an area that has already suffered a collapse.<\/p>\n Work has also started from the far side of the road tunnel, a much longer third route estimated to be around 480 metres.<\/p>\n Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami on Sunday visited the home of one of the trapped workers and apprised the family of the efforts being made for their rescue.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are working with full force to get all the workers out safely,\u201d he said in a post on social media.<\/p>\n The workers were seen alive for the first time on Tuesday, peering into the lens of an endoscopic camera sent by rescuers down a thin pipe through which air, food, water and electricity are being delivered.<\/p>\n A basic telephone exchange has been set up at the site so that families of the trapped men \u2014 many of whom are migrant workers from poor families from far across India \u2014 could call in to speak to them.<\/p>\n Efforts have been painfully slow, complicated by falling debris and repeated breakdowns of drilling machines.<\/p>\n Vertical shaft<\/h2>\n
\u2018Difficult operation\u2019<\/h2>\n