Rescuers in South Africa have pulled at least 78 dead and more than 160 surviving miners from an abandoned gold mine, where they had been trapped for more than two months during a standoff with authorities demanding they surrender to police for mining illegally.
Hundreds of miners are believed to be still trapped in the mine, and the death toll is expected to rise.
Non-governmental organizations claim that authorities have removed the equipment the miners used to enter and exit the mine.
They also say that many of the miners have died of starvation due to the government’s refusal to launch a rescue operation for weeks.
The rescue is now underway, but only a few miners can be pulled out at a time, and the operation could take up to 10 days.
South African authorities have claimed that the miners could always have escaped through another shaft at the Bufelfontein gold mine.
However, activists said that the shaft is reached by a dangerous underground path that could take days, and many are too weak or sick after months underground, with little food and water.
Police claim that some miners refused to leave.
Responding to a request from a relative of one of the miners, a court last week ordered the authorities to launch a rescue operation that began on Monday.
Police first tried to force the miners out of the closed mine near the town of Stillfontein, southwest of Johannesburg, in November by cutting off their food and water supplies.
The court then ruled that the authorities must deliver supplies, but civic groups argue that officials should have done more at the time because, “even without police intervention, the miners were unable to get enough food and water into the mine.”
The mine is 2.5 kilometers deep with multiple shafts, many levels and tunnels.
A group representing the miners said that many groups were in different parts of the mine and estimated that more than 500 miners were underground when the rescue began.
It is not clear how long they have been underground, but the miners’ families say some of them have been there since July.
Police said today that 78 bodies have been found so far, and that 166 survivors have been pulled out.
