According to the Associated Press and Reuters on the 13th (local time), at least 100 of the hundreds of people trapped for months at the Steelfontaine abandoned gold mine in South Africa's Southwest have died of starvation and dehydration so far.
More than 500 people are still trapped inside the gold mine, the local miners' support group (MACUA) said.
The devastation was released on the 10th after a video of bodies wrapped in plastic was taken from the mobile phones of some miners rescued from gold mines.
In the video, dozens of bodies were placed on a dark shaft, and "people are starving to death." Please help me. A man's voice was heard saying, "Please put in food and get us out."
The illegal miners entered a closed gold mine 2.5 kilometers underground without permission, and authorities put in place super precipitation in November last year to stop bringing water and food into the ground and issue a crackdown order to bring them to the ground.
Some of the miners have been in gold mines since April last year, and are not known to be professional miners.
The gold mine in question is said to be one of the deepest in South Africa and is divided into several layers, forcing miners to crawl out for three or four days, determined to lose their lives.
The group said someone destroyed the pulley connected to the underground and barely restored it on the 9th.
Local police said it was not clear exactly how many miners remained underground and there was a chance there could be hundreds.
Authorities will continue to send a delegation to the site on the 14th to ensure that illegal miners come to the ground.
"These miners are not criminals, they are former miners who have lost their jobs and suffered hunger due to the closure of the gold mine," the group said, expressing concern that "they will be forced to return to the mine."
AI Anchor: Y-GO
Caption editing: Jeong Eui-jin
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