STILFONTEIN, South Africa — (AP) — South African police ended a rescue operation at an abandoned gold mine on Wednesday and said they believe they have brought out all the survivors and retrieved all the bodies after hundreds of miners were trapped for months in one of the country's deepest mines while working illegally.
At least 78 miners were confirmed dead, police said, and 246 survivors had been rescued. The victims were suspected to have died of starvation or dehydration, civic groups said, although no cause of death has been released for any of them.
The death toll is likely higher, as a community group reported retrieving nine bodies before the police operation started. There have also been reports of an unconfirmed number of bodies and survivors being brought out sporadically during other community-led rescue efforts since last year.
The surprise announcement ending the operation came a day after the police minister said it would likely last until at least next week.
Rescuers would do a final sweep of the mine on Thursday, said Maj.-Gen. Patrick Asaneng, the acting police commissioner for North West province.
The announcement brought a sudden end to a disaster that has focused criticism on the South African government's decision last year to try to force out the miners by cutting off their food and other supplies.
Civic groups say the government's refusal to stage a rescue sooner effectively left the miners to die of starvation or dehydration. It was unclear exactly how long the miners were underground for, but Asaneng said some of them had been in the mine since August. Relatives said others had been there since July.
Some of the survivors were badly emaciated and barely able to walk and had to be helped into ambulances. All of them would be arrested and charged with illegal mining and trespassing, police said.
South Africa's second biggest political party, which is part of a government coalition, has called for an independent inquiry to find out “why the situation was allowed to get so badly out of hand.”
Authorities launched the rescue effort on Monday in response to a court order last week ordering them to do so.
A specialist mining rescue company had been dropping a small cage thousands of meters down a shaft to retrieve survivors and bodies. But no personnel from the company went down because they considered it too dangerous — instead two community volunteers were in the cage to help the miners out.
Those two volunteers had searched underground Wednesday and reported there were no more bodies or survivors, Asaneng said.
However, Mzukisi Jam, a spokesperson for the South African National Civics Organisation, said that there were more bodies at another shaft and demanded to know what was going to happen with them. “What are we going to tell the relatives?” he said on TV station Newzroom Afrika.
The mine is 2.5 kilometers (1.5 miles) deep with multiple shafts, many levels and a maze of tunnels. Another civic group had estimated that more than 500 miners were underground when the rescue started. Police brought out 324 bodies and survivors in total.
The closed Buffelsfontein Gold Mine was the scene of a standoff in November when police tried to force the miners out by cutting off their supplies for a period of time.
A court ruled that authorities had to allow supplies in — but civic groups argued that officials needed to do more because the miners still weren't getting enough food and water and the situation was becoming dire.
South African authorities have said that the miners were able to exit through another shaft, but some refused because they feared being arrested. Activists said that escaping for most would involve a dangerous trek underground, and many were too weak or ill after months underground with little food and water.
Police have said they were carrying out their mandate to “combat criminality” and said they seized gold, explosives, firearms and more than $2 million in cash from the miners. They said the vast majority were foreign nationals from Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Lesotho and in South Africa illegally.
One of the civic groups representing the miners released two videos over the weekend showing what it said were the dire conditions underground. The videos were on a cellphone carried out of the mine by one of the miners, the group said, along with a note urging people to watch them.
In them, dozens of what appear to be dead bodies can be seen lined up in a darkened cavern and wrapped in plastic. The man filming says they are dying and begs for authorities to send them food and get them out.
Authorities are particularly under fire for their tactics last year, when they cut off food and other supplies to the miners for a period of time. It was an attempt to “smoke them out,” a South African Cabinet minister said, adding that authorities would not help the miners because they were “criminals.”
Rights groups condemned the plan and South Africa's second largest trade union federation called it “one of the most horrific displays of state willful negligence in recent history.”
But while anger is high in the local community, the tragedy has not stoked a strong reaction across South Africa, where illegal mining is often in the news.
The practice is common at mines that companies have closed because they are no longer profitable, leaving groups of informal miners to enter in a search for leftover deposits. South Africa has an estimated 6,000 abandoned mines, and authorities said more than 1,500 people had been arrested for illegal mining in the Stilfontein area since last August.
The South African government has taken a hard-line approach to the miners — called "zama zamas" in the Zulu language, which roughly translates as "hustlers" or “chancers.” They are often armed and part of criminal syndicates, the government says, and rob South Africa of more than $1 billion a year in gold.
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Imray reported from Cape Town, South Africa.
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