Rescuers have found the bodies of four of ten miners missing since August 2022 in a flooded coal mine in northeastern Mexico, the Mexican president said.

“Four bodies have been found,” Andres López Obrador, who went to the site of the El Pinabete coal mine in the state of Coahuila, where the accident occurred on August 3, 2022, wrote on X.

“I hope that we will be able to return each of these people to their families,” said the head of state, who had pledged after the tragedy to find the miners and compensate the families of the victims.

The mine was flooded during excavation work which caused the flow of water that had accumulated in a neighboring mine.

Five workers managed to escape but ten were reported as missing since the day of the accident.

The state of Cuahuila provides almost all of the coal that Mexico produces, most of the time in very dangerous working conditions for the miners.

Many accidents have left the region in mourning, the most serious of which occurred on February 19, 2006, when 65 workers were killed in a coal mine explosion. Only two bodies were recovered.