Rescuers have reached 19 miners trapped underground in a Polish copper mine after an earthquake caused a cave-in.

A spokesman for state-controlled mine operator KGHM said they were alive and undergoing medical checks as each one of them was being brought to the surface.

Four people had earlier managed to walk out on their own.

The miners were trapped 600m below ground at the Rudna mine, about 249 miles (400km) southwest of the Polish capital Warsaw.

An operation was launched to get to them via another mine, linked to the one the crew were trapped in which was deemed unstable, and therefore too dangerous.

“Our mines are linked together. Although there is also a rubble there … it is however more stable. It is safer, machines can operate there and it gives hope,”  KGHM spokesman Dariusz Wyborski said.

The company lost contact with the miners for several hours because the tremor cut communication lines.

The mine has been in operation since 1974, and KGHM is Europe’s second-biggest copper producer.

Poland has a large numbers of mines, mostly in the heavily industrialised Silesia region.

In 2006, a gas explosion at a coal mine in the region killed 23 miners.

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