Rescuers have pulled out 36 dead bodies and 82 survivors from a gold mine in South Africa, police said – adding that the survivors would all face illegal mining and immigration charges.
Hundreds more men and dozens more bodies are still trapped, according to a miners’ rights group that issued footage on Monday showing corpses and skeletal survivors in the mine.
They were illegally mining in an abandoned gold mine and have been engaged in a lengthy standoff with authorities who had cut off their food, water and supplies in an attempt to “smoke them out”.
During a rescue operation that started on Monday, the authorities are using a cage-like structure to recover the men from more than 2km underground.
Photos from the scene show men – some emaciated – being carried out on stretchers, while a group sits surrounded by police officers and paramedics.
The authorities say surviving miners are able to come out and are refusing, but that has been disputed by rights groups and activists, who have fiercely criticised police tactics at the Buffelsfontein Gold Mine.
The mine near Stilfontein, southwest of Johannesburg, has been the scene of a tense stand-off between police, miners and members of the local community since November, when authorities first launched an operation to try to force the miners out.
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At the time, Cabinet minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni said the government would not help the illegal miners, and told reporters: “We are not sending help to criminals.
“We are going to smoke them out. They will come out.”
Illegal mining is common in parts of gold-rich South Africa where companies close down mines that are no longer profitable, leaving groups of informal miners to illegally enter them to try to find leftover deposits.
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Police assert those still in the mine are attempting to avoid arrest, while activists and relatives said the only way out is for miners to travel to another shaft – which can take days – and crawl out there.
The Mining Affected Communities United in Action (MACUA) group said many of the miners are effectively dying of starvation and unable to climb out because the shaft is too steep and the ropes and pulley system they used to enter have been removed.
