KABUL. Dec 17 (Interfax-AVN) - An advanced team of the Russian Emergency Ministry experts has arrived at the Salang pass area, head of the ministry's Humanitarian Center in Afghanistan Colonel Shamsutdin Dagirov told Interfax-Military News Agency on Monday.
The team numbers 24 experts operating assets and equipment necessary for reconstructing a strategic tunnel.
The team are now camping half and an hour kilometers south of the tunnel's southern portal. They will get down to work before the rest of the experts arrive at the site.
Dagirov said that preliminary assessment according to which the tunnel was in satisfactory condition and could be restored within short terms proved to be right in the wake of on-site inspection. This is the opinion of experts of the Emergency Ministry, Transstroy, Protonmetrostroy and Metrogiprotrans specialists who were engaged in the analysis, Dagirov stressed.
The head of the center says the 70-meter stretch of the road in the area of the tunnel's southern portal had suffered the greatest destruction. The main effort will be put on restoring the ventilation and energy supply systems.
The first phase of the restoration work will be funded by the French Co-operation and Technical Development Agency. The Agency is also to provide 150 Afghan construction workers with corresponding assets and equipment.