No more illegal miners are believed to be trapped underground at a gold mine in South Africa, volunteers working with rescue teams have said.
At least 78 bodies and more than 200 survivors have been pulled out since Monday after a court ordered the government to facilitate rescue operations at the mine, the site of one of the most extraordinary tragedies to hit the industry.
Police said they would check that no-one was left on Thursday, when a rescue cage would be sent down the mine.
The stand-off began in November when the government ordered police to arrest any miner who surfaced, saying it was determined to end illegal mining.
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During a visit on Tuesday, the police and mines ministers were insulted and told to leave by an angry crowd that blamed the government for the deaths.
Police said that more than 1,500 miners had come to the surface before the rescue operation began, Reuters news agency reports.
However, others remained underground, either because they feared arrest or were forced to stay there by gangs that control the mine.
A South African Police Service spokesman said of the volunteers’ statement that no-one was now still underground: “We will rely on the Mine Rescue Service to confirm this with their state-of-the-art equipment that will hopefully be able to give us a picture of what is happening underground.
“The Mine Rescue Service have confirmed that they will send the cage underground in the morning to see if any illegal miners surface with the cage. We cannot say for sure that the operation has been called off at this stage.”
Many mines in South Africa have been abandoned over the last three decades by companies that did not find them economically viable.
The mines have been taken over by gangs, often former employees, that sell minerals they find on the black market.
This includes the mine in Stilfontein, some 145km (90 miles) south-west of the country’s biggest city, Johannesburg, which has been the focus of government efforts to clamp down on the illegal industry.
A rescue cage has been making trips down a shaft to reach scores of miners thought to be at least 2km (1.2 miles) underground.
Many of the survivors had been without food and water since November, leaving them emaciated. They are now receiving medical care.
The authorities say they will be charged with illegal mining, trespassing and contravention of immigration laws, as the majority of the miners are undocumented migrants from neighbouring countries.
“It’s a crime against the economy, it’s an attack on the economy,” Mines Minister Gwede Mantashe said on Wednesday as he defended the hard line taken against the miners.
South Africa relied heavily on miners from countries such as Lesotho and Mozambique before the industry went into decline.
Unemployment in South Africa is currently more than 30% and many former miners say they have little alternative source of income.