South African union calls Stilfontein mine siege a 'state-sponsored massacre'
South African rescuers on Thursday ended their attempts to find anyone left in an illegal gold mine where at least 78 people died during a months-long police siege. The Giwusa labour union called the operation the "worst state-sponsored massacre" since the end of apartheid.
Since Monday, rescuers have used a cylindrical metal cage to pull up 78 bodies and 248 survivors, some of them emaciated and disorientated, in a court-ordered operation at the mine near the town of Stilfontein, southwest of Johannesburg.
The cage was sent down to 1,280 metres with cameras on Thursday for a final sweep.
"We couldn't see any person still left behind and we couldn't hear any voices on the recording," head of Mines Rescue Services, Mannas Fourie, told reporters at the site.
The police operation, "Vala Umgodi" ("close the hole" in Zulu), started in August. Over the course of the siege, 1,907 miners resurfaced, while 87 bodies were retrieved.
Most of the survivors are foreign nationals, including 1,125 Mozambicans and 465 Zimbabweans. Only 26 are South Africans, according to police.
They have been arrested and charged with illegal immigration, trespass, illegal mining and other offences.
Investigators now face "a mammoth task" in identifying the dead as some of the bodies were already decomposing, and in some cases just bones, police spokeswoman Athlenda Mathe told journalists.
Among the dead, only two have been identified so far, Mathe said.
No longer viable for commercial extraction, the mine – known as Shaft 11 – was entered illegally by the men trying to eke out a living.
(with newswires)
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