Timika:
Rescuers pulled one more body from a collapsed mine tunnel in eastern Indonesia on Thursday, officials said, taking the death toll to five as search teams battled to reach 23 others still trapped.
Ten workers have been rescued alive following the accident on Tuesday at US firm Freeport-McMoRan's Grasberg, one of the world's biggest gold and copper mines high in the mountains of rugged Papua province.
Freeport said it had also discovered that another worker had escaped from the tunnel unharmed when the accident happened. The worker initially failed to inform authorities, a source close to the rescue effort told AFP.
"Rescuers recovered another body from the debris at 2:50 am (2320 IST)," Freeport Indonesia, the local subsidiary of the US firm, said in a statement. Local police chief Sudirman, who goes by one name, said efforts to rescue the Indonesian workers were being hampered by "very limited space and the risk of falling rocks from above that could put the evacuation team in danger".
The tunnel was part of an underground training facility and not one of the mining areas. Those inside at the time of the accident were direct employees and contract workers attending a safety training course.
Freeport Indonesia head Rozik Soetjipto arrived at the mine Thursday to talk to rescuers and relatives of the dead, as operations remained suspended after a shutdown the previous day to show sympathy with those affected.
A protest calling for safer working conditions stretched into a second day Thursday as hundreds of workers blocked a road with heavy machinery, trucks and wood, allowing only ambulances and other vehicles involved in the rescue to pass.
The company has given no indication when operations will resume, or what might have caused the accident.
In 2011, a three-month strike by thousands of workers at Grasberg crippled production, and only came to an end once management agreed to a big pay hike.
The industrial action sparked a wave of deadly clashes between police and gunmen around the mine, with at least 11 people, all Indonesians, killed.