This footage was filmed and produced 28 November 2023.

Rescuers have successfully drilled through debris to reach 41 workers trapped for 17 days in a collapsed tunnel in the Indian Himalayas.

An official said they are due to start pulling the men to safety shortly.

The men were stuck in the 4.5km tunnel in the mountainous state of Uttarakhand since it caved in earlier this month.

The process of pulling them out, one at a time on wheeled stretchers through a pipe 90cm wide, will take a couple of hours, officials said.

The evacuation pipe has to be pushed through and debris cleared before rescue workers can crawl through and begin getting the men out, they said.

Dozens of rescue workers with ropes and ladders are lined up outside the tunnel and ambulances have begun arriving to take the 41 men to a hospital about 30km away.

After repeated setbacks in the operation, military engineers and skilled miners worked by hand in a painstaking dig through rock and rubble towards the men using a so-called "rat-hole" mining technique to clear the final stretch.

Though trapped, the workers have plenty of space in the tunnel, with the area inside 8.5 metres high and stretching about 2km in length.