The miners were able to send up a note through a shaft drilled 700 meters (2,300 feet) into the earth to alert engineers and family members above ground that they were together and alive inside an emergency shelter.

"All 33 of us are well inside the shelter," read the note, written in capital letters using bold red ink.

President Sebastian Pinera read the message aloud and waved the note in the air, as friends and relatives wept with joy outside the northern Chilean mine whose entrance collapsed on August 5, trapping the workers inside.

"This came out of the ground. It's a message from our miners telling us they are alive, that they are together," Pinera told reporters outside the San Jose gold and copper mine near the northern city of Copiapo, 800 kilometers (500 miles) north of Santiago.

His words were met by a roar of cheers, as friends and families wept and hugged each other in relief after days of fading hopes.

As word spread that the miners were alive after 17 days below ground, drivers honked their horns in the capital Santiago and hundreds of people gathered in the streets to celebrate and wave national flags.

Until Sunday, there had been no sign that the miners had survived their ordeal.

But then came the notes attached to a line that had been lowered through the narrow shaft drilled into emergency shelter.

"First came a plastic bag attached with rubber bands with a letter from Mario Gomez to his wife," said Mining Minister Laurence Golborne.

Gomez, one of the trapped miners, wrote: "I haven't stopped thinking about the family for one minute. I love you all."

"We celebrated without knowing anything more than that," Golborne said. "But then came that message that says the 33 are alive."

Despite the dramatic breakthrough, the chief engineer in charge of the rescue operation, Andres Sougarret, said it would take at least four months of drilling to reach and bring out the trapped miners.

Rescue workers said the next step was to lower a camera and microphone to the shelter where the miners are trapped, and later food, water and other equipment.

"I thank the miners for their bravery, for their courage in holding out more than two weeks in the depths of the mountain," said Pinera.

"Now we must keep working. We have to put a tube through the shaft so we can send them water, food, lighting and communication" equipment.

"But the most important thing is already there: moral support. The miners know we're striving to rescue them. They know it's a matter of days when they'll be rescued," he added.

Sougarret said that extracting the trapped miners from their pocket deep underground required a more powerful digging machine to drill a big enough shaft to bring out the miners.

"A shaft 66 centimeters (26 inches) in diameter (will take) at least 120 days" to complete, the engineer said.

Reaching the miners with the small-bore shaft through which their note was relayed took several hit-and-miss attempts, and rescuers had almost lost all hope of finding the men alive, Sougarret added.

During the past two weeks, some 500 people clambered to the mine on top of a mountain in Chile's Atacama desert to pray for the trapped men. Messages of hope were written with piles of stones around the entrance to the mine.

Friends and family celebrated the good news by cheering and waving a Chilean flag that had been found among the debris left by the earthquake and tsunami that devastated central Chile on February 27.

"They'll come out thin and dirty, but whole and strong, because the miners have shown they have courage and mettle, which is what has kept them together," Pinera said, choking with emotion.

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