Death toll rises to 87 as standoff between police and miners ends in South Africa

STILFONTEIN, South Africa (AP) — The death toll in a monthslong standoff between police and miners trapped while working illegally underground at an abandoned gold mine in South Africa has risen to at least 87, police said Thursday as they wound down a rescue operation that has pulled more than 240 survivors out from deep underground.

National police spokesperson Athlenda Mathe said that 78 bodies were retrieved from the mine in an official rescue operation that began Monday, while another nine had been recovered previously. She did not give details on how those other bodies were retrieved. Community groups have said they launched their own rescue attempts when authorities said last year they would not help the miners because they were “criminals.”

The miners are suspected to have died of starvation and dehydration.

Authorities now believe that nearly 2,000 miners were underground working illegally at the Buffelsfontein Gold Mine southwest of Johannesburg since August last year. Many of them resurfaced on their own over the last few months, police said, and all the survivors have been arrested.

Police announced Wednesday that they were ending the rescue operation and believed no one else was underground. A camera would be sent down on Thursday to make certain, Mathe said. The mine is one of the deepest in South Africa and the miners were working up to 2.5 kilometers (1.5 miles) underground.

Mathe said at least 13 children had also come out of the mine before the official rescue operation. The vast majority of the miners are foreign nationals from neighboring countries, police said.

South African authorities have been widely criticized for their approach, having cut off food and supplies to the miners for a period of time last year in an attempt, as one Cabinet minister said, to “smoke them out.”

Civic groups have said authorities have contributed to dozens of deaths, while there are calls for an independent inquiry to investigate what happened.

Police maintain that the miners were able to come out through several different shafts but many refused out of fear of being arrested. That’s been disputed by groups representing the miners, who say some were trapped and left starving underground.

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Imray reported from Cape Town, South Africa.

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AP Africa news: https://apnews.com/hub/africa

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