Rescue crews in Honduras are working to set free 11 miners who were trapped in a gold mine on Wednesday, the BBC reported.

The miners were working in a mine near the town of El Corpus, Honduras, which is about 70 miles from the country's capital of Tegucigalpa. The workers were inside the mine when a landslide blocked their exit.

Firefighters said they had made contact with a few of the miners, but the statuses of the remaining are unknown, according to BBC, which also said that informal mines are common in Honduras and that they lack proper security measures.

"We have had contact with three of the workers that are trapped and we are working carefully removing earth and stone to reach and rescue them," firefighter Manuel de Jesus Reyes told Reuters. "With the three miners we've located, we have auditory contact. They are banging their picks and shovels and yelling. It seems like less noise today, but we keep working to get to them and save their lives."

The area around El Corpus is prone to minor earthquakes and landslides. The firefighters said the work to rescue the trapped miners was slow and tedious because they want to avoid causing another landslide.

The head of the rescue crews, Siriaco Diaz, told the Mirror that oxygen is being passed to the miners through a hose and that the crews are communicating with them by shouting.

Diaz said the mine could be as deep as 260 feet.

The mayor of El Corpus, Luis Andres Rueda, told BBC that there are more than 50 informal mines in the area and hundreds of miners that work in them daily. The miners use ladders to climb down into the earth and use pickaxes in an attempt to pull gold from the dirt.

Since the mine is informal, it lacks a map of the underground network, making the rescue attempts even more difficult.