Hundreds more survived and dozens of bodies were still underground, according to the miners’ rights group.
South African rescuers pulled 36 bodies and 82 survivors from a gold mine in two days of operations, police said, adding that the survivors would face illegal mining and immigration charges.
After nine bodies were recovered on Monday, 27 more were recovered from deep underground on Tuesday, police Brigadier Athlenda Mathe said in a statement.
The police started laying down siege to a mine about 150 km (90 mi) southwest of Johannesburg in the town of Stilfontein in August i cut off food and water for months to force the miners to the surface to arrest them as part of a crackdown on illegal mining.
Hundreds more survivors and dozens of bodies are still underground, according to a miners’ rights group that released footage Monday showing the corpses and skeletons of mine survivors.
Save operationswhich involves using a metal cage to pull survivors and bodies from a mine shaft more than 2 km (1.2 miles) underground, will take days. Police said they would update the figures daily.
Usually, illegal mining takes place in mines that have been abandoned by companies because they are no longer commercially viable on a large scale.
Illegal miners, often immigrants from other African countries, go to dig up whatever is left.
‘War for the Economy’
The South African government said the siege of the Stilfontein mine was necessary to combat illegal mining, which Mining Minister Gwede Mantashe described as a “war on the economy”.
He estimated that the illegal trade in precious metals was worth 60 billion rand ($3.17 billion) last year.
Minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni said in November: “We are not sending aid to criminals. We will drive them out with smoke.”
But a court ruled in December that volunteers should be allowed to send supplies to the trapped men, and another edict last week ordered the state to launch a rescue operation that began Monday.
“All 82 arrested face charges of illegal mining, trespassing and breaching the Immigration Act,” police said in a statement, referring to all those pulled out alive on Monday and Tuesday.
The statement added that two of them would face additional charges for possession of the gold.
The government crackdown, part of an operation dubbed “Wala Umgodi” or “Close the Hole” in isiZulu, has drawn criticism from human rights groups and local residents.
