STILFONTEIN, South Africa — (AP) — South African police said Wednesday they have ended a rescue operation and believe they have brought out all the survivors and retrieved all the bodies from an abandoned gold mine where hundreds of miners were trapped for months while working illegally.
The surprise announcement came just a day after the police minister said the rescue operation would likely last until at least next week. Police said that 78 bodies had been recovered from the gold mine since the rescue operation began on Monday and more than 240 survivors had been rescued.
Police said rescuers would do a final sweep of the mine on Thursday to ensure no more survivors or bodies were underground.
It apparently 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 food and other supplies.
Civic groups say the government's weekslong refusal to stage a rescue effectively left scores of miners to die of starvation or dehydration having been underground for at least two months. Authorities only began the rescue operation on Monday after they were ordered to by a court.
South African authorities have argued that the miners were able to exit through another shaft at Buffelsfontein Gold Mine, one of the deepest in the mineral-rich country.
But activists said that would involve a dangerous trek underground, and many became too weak or ill after months underground with little food and water. Police contend some miners refused to come out.
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.”
In response to a request by a relative of one of the miners, a court last week ordered a rescue operation, which began Monday. A specialist mining rescue company has been dropping a small cage thousands of meters (feet) into the mine to retrieve survivors and bodies. But no personnel from the company entered the shaft because they considered it too dangerous — instead community volunteers headed down in the cage to help the miners out.
Police first tried to force the miners out of the closed mine near the town of Stilfontein, southwest of Johannesburg, in November by cutting off their supplies. The move, part of a larger crackdown on illegal mining, began a standoff between authorities and the miners and members of the community.
A court ruled that authorities had to allow supplies in — but civic groups argue that officials needed to do more at that point because even without police interference the miners weren't able to get enough food and water into the mine and the situation was becoming dire.
The mine is 2.5 kilometers (1.5 miles) deep with multiple shafts, many levels and a maze of tunnels. A group representing the miners had said there were numerous groups in various parts of the mine and estimated that more than 500 miners were underground when the rescue started.
The survivors were arrested and will face charges of illegal mining and trespassing, police said. Authorities seized gold, explosives, firearms and more than $2 million in cash from the miners.
It's unclear exactly how long they were underground, but relatives say some of them have been there since July.
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. They also show shirtless, emaciated-looking miners while 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 underground 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 have condemned the plan, accusing authorities of contributing to a “massacre” at the mine. 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.
The South African government has taken a hard-line approach to the groups, which have long been a problem for authorities. They are often armed and part of criminal syndicates, the government says, and many are foreigners who entered South Africa illegally from neighboring countries.
The government says they are robbing South Africa of more than $1 billion a year in gold.
Authorities said that more than 1,500 people have been arrested for mining illegally in the Stilfontein area over the last year, with the vast majority of them from Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Lesotho.
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Imray reported from Cape Town, South Africa.
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