A rescue operation in Chile at the world’s largest underground copper mine ended on Sunday with no survivors, as the body of a fifth missing miner was found days after a tunnel collapsed, officials said.

“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 centre 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 4500km of tunnels and is the largest underground copper deposit in the world.

Last year, it produced 356,000 metric tonnes (over 392,000 tons) 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.

– Agence France-Presse