A fresh landslide hampered efforts to rescue 40 labourers trapped in an under-construction tunnel in Uttarakhand for over 70 hours. Rescue officials had spent hours preparing a platform for the auger drilling machine to insert steel pipes through the rubble, but a landslide on Tuesday night forced them to dismantle the machine and start work on the platform again.

The drilling machine would have helped create a passage for the labourers to come out of the tunnel which collapsed on Sunday morning. Officials said around 21 metres of slab blocking the tunnel has been removed and a 19 metres passage is yet to be cleared.

Uttarkashi District Magistrate Abhishek Ruhela had earlier told reporters that the trapped labourers could be evacuated today.

“If everything goes as planned, the trapped labourers will be evacuated by Wednesday,” he said after visiting the accident site on Tuesday evening.

But the latest visuals showed rescue teams dismantling the drilling machine and the platform that had been created.

In an update, the state disaster response force said that work is on to set up a new drilling machine.

Videos from the spot showed huge piles of concrete blocking the tunnel, twisted metal bars from its broken roof buried in rubble creating more obstacles for rescue workers – who are mostly migrants from Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Odisha, Uttarakhand, and Himachal Pradesh.

The plan is to push through both 800- and 900-millimetre diameter sections of mild steel pipes — one after the other — into the rubble using drilling equipment and create an escape passage for the workers who, officials said earlier, are safe and being provided with oxygen, water, food packets and medicines through tubes.

There are eight 900-millimetre diameter pipes with a length of six metres each and five pipes of 800-millimetre diameter of the same length, the State Emergency Operation Centre said.

A part of the tunnel being built between Silkyara and Dandalgaon on the Brahmakhal-Yamunotri National Highway caved in on Sunday following a landslide. The trapped workers have a buffer of around 400 metres to walk and breathe, officials said.

The rescue teams have also successfully established communication with the workers with Walkie-Talkies. Initial contact was made via a note on a scrap of paper, but later rescuers managed to connect using radio handsets.

The Israeli military said it was carrying out an operation against Hamas in the Gaza Strip’s Al Shifa hospital on Wednesday and urged all members of the militant group in the hospital to surrender.

Less than an hour earlier, a Gaza health ministry spokesman said Israel had told officials in the enclave that it would raid the Shifa hospital complex “in the coming minutes.”

In a statement, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said: “Based on intelligence information and an operational necessity, IDF forces are carrying out a precise and targeted operation against Hamas in a specified area in the Shifa Hospital.”

The military added: “The IDF forces include medical teams and Arabic speakers, who have undergone specified training to prepare for this complex and sensitive environment, with the intent that no harm is caused to the civilians.”

Israel has said that Hamas has a command centre underneath Al Shifa hospital, the biggest in Gaza, and uses the hospital and tunnels underneath to conceal military operations and to hold hostages. Hamas denies it.

The US said on Tuesday that its own intelligence supported those conclusions.

Five weeks after Israel swore to destroy Hamas in retaliation for militants’ cross-border assault, the fate of Al Shifa has become a focus of international alarm because of worsening conditions in the facility.

Medical staff have said the hospital is barely functioning due to Israeli attacks and a lack of fuel to power generators.

Israeli forces have waged fierce street battles against Hamas fighters over the past 10 days before advancing into the centre of Gaza City and surrounding Al Shifa

 A 16-year-old girl, who was allegedly sexually harassed by a man, committed suicide in Uttar Pradesh’s Shamli district on Tuesday by consuming poison as the accused was pressuring her to withdraw the case, police said.

The incident took place in a village in the Jhinjhana police station area.

The girl’s father had lodged a police complaint alleging that Talib had sexually harassed his daughter. Talib was arrested by police last year but was later granted bail by the court.

According to a complaint lodged by the girl’s father on Tuesday, Talib was pressuring his daughter to withdraw the case against him which is pending in court.

Based on the fresh complaint, Talib has been booked on charges of abetment of suicide, Additional Superintendent of Police O P Singh said.

Efforts are being made to arrest the accused, who is on the run, he said.