'Just hours' before Chile mine rescue starts

Chilean officials are "just hours" from starting a historic operation on Tuesday to rescue 33 miners trapped underground in Chile for more than two months, Chilean Mining Minister Laurence Golborne said.

"We are just hours from beginning this process. But we will only do it when it is safe to do so," he told reporters at the site of the pending operation, in the San Jose mine in northern Chile.

Golborne would not give an exact starting time, saying only that the rescue was expected to begin late Tuesday.

"We will start as soon as we can," once last-minute tests were completed, he said.

The minister did not confirm another official's statement to AFP that the rescue would begin at 8:00 pm (2300 GMT) Tuesday, four hours earlier than an initial forecast of midnight (0300 GMT Wednesday).

"It's fairly certain that we can start the rescue today at 8pm," Carlos Vilches, the legislative representative for the Copiapo region where the mine is located, said.

"It was within our planning to move things forward if the (preparatory) stages were completed in advance. This is what happened," Vilches said.

Initially, officials had thought it would take until Christmas to get the miners out.

But the drilling of a rescue tunnel 622 meters (2,041 feet) deep to reach the gallery where the miners were trapped was completed last weekend, well ahead of time.

Since then, tests of the tunnel have been successfully completed and all looked set to slowly bring the men up, one by one. The last of them was expected to be saved by late Thursday.