SOUTH AFRICA:Police in South Africa revealed yesterday that 23 miners working illegally in the country's central mining region were killed last week in an underground fire, writes Joe Humphreysin Johannesburg.
The bodies were discovered yesterday morning and brought to the surface by colleagues who had been arrested last Tuesday when the fire first broke out in an unsupervised shaft in Welcome, said Supt Motantsi Makhele.
Close to 120 people had been arrested and charged with trespassing following the blaze. A group of them returned to the mine yesterday to look for colleagues who were still missing.
Police earlier this year warned that illegal mining was on the rise in South Africa, with some unlicensed workers living for several months at a time underground.
The so-called "gold pirates" tend to be driven into the trade by poverty, and are frequently controlled by organised crime syndicates. Last year, the South African Institute for Security Studies said that up to €180 million in gold was taken illegally out of the mines annually.