Identifying bodies recovered from an abandoned mine shaft in South Africa this week will be a “mammoth task”, a police spokesman said.
Seventy-eight bodies, along with more than 240 illegal miners, have been brought to the surface since Monday as part of the rescue operation, Brigadier Athlenda Mathe told reporters near the top of the Stilfontein mine shaft.
They had been underground since at least November.
Then the authorities stepped up efforts to put an end to illegal mining activities by surrounding the entrance to the shaft and denying access to food and water.
The police always said that the miners were free to leave at any time.
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The mine has now been cleared of bodies and living people, the police say.
Only two deceased have been positively identified so far, Brigadier Mathe said.
“Some of [the corpses] there were decomposed bodies that appeared mostly as bones,” she added.
DNA tests are being conducted, but a further challenge to identity discovery is that “most [those found] are undocumented migrants,” she added. Their families may not be aware that they were even in the mine shaft.
The vast majority of those who survived were from neighboring countries such as Mozambique and Zimbabwe.
Union activists and human rights activists accused the authorities of overseeing the massacre.
But police defended their actions, saying they were dealing with crime and that leaders in charge of illegal mining were controlling the flow of supplies and trying to prevent people from resurfacing.
During Tuesday’s visit, police and mining ministers were insulted by an angry crowd who blamed the government for the death and were told to leave.
Police said more than 1,500 miners surfaced before the rescue operation began.
However, others remained underground, either because they feared arrest or because gangs controlling the mine forced them to stay there.
Many mines in the Republic of South Africa have been abandoned in the last three decades by companies that did not consider them economically viable.
The mines have been taken over by gangs, often ex-employees, who sell the minerals they find on the black market.
These include a mine in Stilfontein, some 145 km (90 miles) southwest of the country’s largest city, Johannesburg, which has been at the center of government efforts to crack down on the illegal industry.
A rescue cage was lowered down the shaft to reach the miners, who were believed to be at least 2 km (1.2 miles) underground.
Many of the survivors had been without food and water since November, leaving them exhausted. They have now been given medical attention.
Authorities say they will be charged with illegal mining, trespassing and violating immigration laws, since most of the miners are undocumented migrants.
“It’s a crime against the economy, it’s an attack on the economy,” Mining Minister Gwede Mantashe said on Wednesday, defending the tough stance on miners.
South Africa relied heavily on miners from countries such as Lesotho and Mozambique before the industry collapsed.
Unemployment in South Africa is currently over 30% and many former miners say they have no alternative sources of income.
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