• 10 workers buried for 12 days
• Original victim rescued Sunday
• God, cigarettes and girlfriend credited
• Rescue operation criticized

VIENNA, Austria -- Rescue workers battling to save 10 Austrian miners trapped in a collapsed pit for 12 days heard noises Wednesday indicating they might be alive, a government official said.

"The rescuers have picked up noises which could come from the miners," a spokeswoman for the Economics Ministry told Reuters. "There is a chance that the noise recorded by the microphones is coming from knocking."

The miners were caught in a mudslide after they descended into the pit to rescue their colleague Georg Hainzl, who was trapped by an earlier collapse in the magnesium silicate mine at Lassing, 135 miles (220 km) southwest of Vienna.

Original victim rescued Sunday

Efforts to reach them were redoubled Sunday after Hainzl, 24, was pulled alive from the pit, ending his 10-day ordeal without food and water.

The official at the ministry, which is responsible for the mining industry, said the sounds were being analyzed to determine their exact location and drilling at two shafts would continue around the clock.

The scale of the task remains daunting.

The ministry official estimated it would take another two days before the drills would reach a hollow some 430 feet (130 meters) below the surface where the men are believed to be stuck.

And six rescuers who entered the partly caved-in mine earlier Wednesday to check its stability were forced out of the shaft because they feared another slide.

"It looks very bad," said Leopold Weber, one of the mining experts supervising the rescue operation. "Some tunnels are completely blocked."

God, cigarettes and girlfriend credited

Hainzl, in his first interview since being lifted to safety through an 32-inch (80-cm) hole, said Wednesday that God, cigarettes and visions of his girlfriend bringing him glasses of water helped him through his ordeal.

"I began to pray," Hainzl said from his hospital bed in nearby Graz in the broadcast on Austrian radio.

Hainzl's rescue has been dubbed "The Miracle of Lassing."

"Once I saw my girlfriend coming towards me with a drink, I often fantasized like that," said Hainzl, who spent his time lying on a table in a room 200 feet (60 meters) underground.

Hospital officials said they had not yet told Hainzl that the search continued for his 10 colleagues and that he believed work had resumed at the mine.

Before Hainzl was recovered, officials had given up hope that any of the men were still alive in the mine, operated by Naintscher Mineralwerke, a unit of London-based Rio Tinto.

Rescue operation criticized

The rescue operation has been surrounded by controversy, with local officials and media criticizing rescue leaders for lack of coordination and for being slow to react to Austria's worst post-war mining disaster.

In the latest issue of the weekly News magazine, due to be published Thursday, a rescuer said he entered the pit last week and heard what he thought might have been signs of life, but the rescue effort was not then intensified.

"On Wednesday, two of us entered the pit and went about 100 meters down," the man, speaking on condition of anonymity, was quoted as saying. "We heard tapping and scratching, but the noise could have stemmed from drilling."

Much criticism has been directed at Economics Minister Johann Farnleitner.

The daily Kurier said in an editorial that Farnleitner had committed "political suicide" by saying Monday -- as Lassing villagers were demanding that the effort be intensified -- that the rescuers should be left alone to get on with their work.

"Can Farnleitner still be saved?" Kurier asked.

A state prosecutor is investigating whether the accident was caused by negligence.