“Today we finally found (dead) the last of the missing workers,” Aquiles Cubillos, prosecutor for Chile’s O’Higgins region, told reporters.

Operations at the El Teniente mining center had been suspended since Friday after a “seismic event” caused the collapse of a tunnel the day before, trapping the five miners inside.

Whether the cause of the shaking was due to an earthquake or drilling remains under investigation.

El Teniente, which is operated by the Chilean state-owned mining firm Codelco, boasts more than 4,500km of tunnels and is the largest underground copper deposit in the world.

Last year, it produced 356,000 tonnes of copper – nearly 7% of the total for Chile.

Chile’s mining industry is considered among the safest in the world, with a fatality rate of 0.02% in 2024, according to the National Geology and Mining Service of Chile.