Rescue workers find body amid race to save people trapped in Chile copper mine

The El Teniente copper mine is one of Chile’s largest (Esteban Felix/AP)

Rescue teams have found a body inside a section of a copper mine in Chile that collapsed two days earlier during a moderate earthquake, the mine’s director said on Saturday.

Rescuers have been trying to reach five miners who were trapped on Thursday evening in the El Teniente mine in central Chile as rocks collapsed around them during a 4.2 magnitude quake.

The copper mine is one of Chile’s largest.

A worker stands inside an office of Codelco, the company that operates the copper mine (Esteban Felix/AP)

A spokesman for the rescue team that is trying to drill through 295 feet of rock to reach the miners said the body found on Saturday is one of the five miners who were trapped in the mine.

El Teniente director Andres Music said authorities were still trying to identify the body.

The body of another miner — not one of the five still trapped — identified as Paulo Marin Tapia was found on Friday, shortly after the mine’s partial collapse.

Nine other mine workers suffered injuries, said Chile’s National Copper Corp, known as Codelco, describing the incident as the result of “a seismic event”.