Rescuers in India on Tuesday reached an area where 41 miners have been trapped for 17 days following the collapse of a road tunnel.

The next stage of the rescue effort involves a plan to pull the miners out on wheeled stretchers through nearly 60 meters of pipe.

The workers became trapped Nov. 12 when a landslide collapsed the tunnel they were working to construct in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand.

Rescue teams drilled by hand to get through the last section of blockage after setbacks with machine-drilling methods.

Some information for this story came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.