Rescuers recover 36 bodies and 82 survivors from a gold mine in South Africa Mining News

Hundreds of other survivors and dozens of bodies remain underground, according to a miners’ rights group.

Police in South Africa said they had recovered 36 bodies and 82 survivors from a gold mine during two days of operations, adding that the survivors would face charges of illegal mining and immigration.

Police Brigadier Athlinda Mathie said in a statement that after nine bodies were recovered on Monday, 27 more were recovered from the depths of the earth on Tuesday.

The police started setting up Siege to the mine located about 150 kilometers (90 miles) southwest of Johannesburg in the town of Stilfontein in August and Cut the food and water for several months to force miners to the surface to arrest them as part of a crackdown on illegal mining.

There are still hundreds more survivors and dozens of bodies underground, according to a miners’ rights group that released footage Monday showing bodies and skeletal survivors in the mine.

Saves OperationsIt involves using a metal cage to retrieve survivors and bodies from a mine more than 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) underground, and will last for several days. Police said they would provide a daily update on the numbers.

Typically, illegal mining takes place in mines that companies have abandoned because they are no longer commercially viable on a large scale.

Unlicensed miners, often immigrants from other African countries, come in to extract what remains.

“War on the economy”

The South African government has said the blockade of the Stilfontein mine is necessary to fight illegal mining, which Mining Minister Gwede Mantashe has described as a “war on the economy”.

The illicit precious metals trade was estimated to be worth 60 billion rand ($3.17 billion) last year.

“We do not send help to criminals,” Minister in the Presidency, Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, said in November. “We’ll smoke them.”

But a court ruled in December that volunteers be allowed to send supplies to the trapped men, and another decree last week ordered the state to launch a rescue operation that began on Monday.

“All 82 people arrested face charges of illegal mining, trespassing and violating immigration law,” police said in a statement, referring to all those who were pulled out alive on Monday and Tuesday.

The statement added that two of them will face additional charges of possession of gold.

The government crackdown, which was part of an operation called “Fala Umgodi” or “Close the Hole” in the IsiZulu language, has drawn criticism from human rights organizations and local residents.