Families have grown increasingly anxious as they awaited word from rescue teams tasked with descending a flooded coal mine in northern Mexico to rescue 10 workers nearly 24 hours after an accident confined the crew deep underground.
The miners became trapped on Wednesday after their excavation work caused a tunnel wall to collapse, triggering flooding in three wells.
Mexico's Civil Protection agency did not immediately respond on Thursday when asked about efforts to pump out the water, and if levels were rising.
Its director, Laura Velazquez, said earlier on Thursday that time was everything, and several hundred officials were "working day and night" to assist with the rescue.
Soldiers, emergency workers and rescue dogs were deployed after the latest disaster to strike Mexico's main coal-producing region in Coahuila state, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said.
"What I want with all my soul is that we rescue the miners," he told reporters.
"We must not lose faith. We must not lose hope," he added.
'I want my husband to come out all right'
Families keeping vigil remained on edge.
Erika Escobedo, the wife of one of the trapped miners, 29-year-old Hugo Tijerina, told the Reuters news agency she spent all night watching rescue efforts at the site in the northern border state of Coahuila.
"They say the water is rising," she said, describing bigger water extraction pumps she saw hauled to the site.
"I want my husband to come out all right," said Escobedo, her voice breaking in a phone interview from the site, as she watched rescuers bore another tunnel to try to reach the miners.
For now, she has told her three children not to worry about their father and that he will come home okay.
"Unfortunately, there's not much hope," Jose Luis Amaya, whose cousin and brother-in-law was among those trapped, told Milenio TV on Wednesday night.
Five other miners escaped the accident. They all received medical treatment, and two have been discharged from the hospital.
Still, Elizabeth Vielma, the mother of three men who work at the site but were not involved in Wednesday's accident, said she worried about conditions there.
"They just give them the drills and send them down," she said.
Source: agencies
