STILFONTEIN, South Africa (Reuters) -South African rescuers have pulled out 36 dead bodies and 82 survivors from a gold mine deep underground in two days of operations, police said on Tuesday, adding that the survivors would all face illegal mining and immigration charges.
Police began laying siege to the mine in August and cut off food and water supplies in an attempt to force the miners to the surface so they could be arrested as part of a crackdown on illegal mining.
A Reuters team at the site saw rescuers carrying one man on a stretcher, while a group of other men, one of them emaciated, sat on the ground surrounded by uniformed police officers and paramedics.
Footage issued by a miners’ rights group on Monday had shown dozens of corpses and skeletal survivors inside the mine, which is located about 150 km (93 miles) from Johannesburg in the town of Stilfontein.
(Reporting by Nellie Peyton, Bhargav Acharya and Alexander Winning; Writing by Estelle Shirbon)
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