By Euronews | Created at 2025-01-14 11:41:30 | Updated at 2025-01-14 23:58:58
12 hours ago
At least 100 illegal miners have died and more than 400 remain trapped underground after a months-long standoff with police, rights groups say.
Rescuers on Tuesday pulled several survivors and dead bodies from one of South Africa’s deepest mines, where hundreds of illegal miners have been trapped underground for months in an abandoned shaft during a standoff with authorities.
Civic groups representing the miners said that at least 24 bodies and 34 survivors have been brought out of the Buffelsfontein Gold Mine since Friday. More than 100 miners are believed to have died of starvation or dehydration, while 400 are still awaiting rescue, according to Mining Affected Communities United in Action (MACUA).
Police said they are uncertain how many remain, but that it is likely to be hundreds.
The mine near the town of Stilfontein, southwest of Johannesburg, has been the scene of a tense standoff between police, miners and members of the local community since November, when authorities first launched an operation to try and force the miners out. Reports say some of them have been underground since July or August last year.
Authorities say the miners are able to come out and are refusing, but that has been disputed by rights groups and activists, who have criticised police tactics in cutting off the miners' food and water supplies from the surface in an attempt to force them out.
MACUA, which took authorities to court in December to force them to allow food, water and medicine to be sent down to the miners, released two smartphone videos which showed dozens of dead bodies of miners wrapped in plastic, and emaciated survivors pleading for help. The footage could not be independently verified by Euronews.
South Africa's minister of police and minister of mineral resources were due to visit the mine on Tuesday. Cabinet minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni told reporters in November that the government would not help the miners, which they considered "criminals".
|We are not sending help to criminals," she said, according to local media. "We are going to smoke them out. They will come out."
