Late last year, a specialized camera was lowered into an almost 1.6-mile-deep mineshaft in South Africa where hundreds of miners were reported to be trapped and starving.

The South African government has launched a rescue operation at an abandoned gold mine in the country’s North West province, where at least 109 men have died, a group representing the miners said, after local authorities cut off vital supplies in a dramatic bid to crack down on the country’s illegal mining trade.

The prospectors were trapped underground for months as police, on orders from South Africa’s government, attempted to starve them out.

Rescuers and volunteers have pulled at least 78 dead miners and more than 160 survivors from an abandoned South African gold mine

Arguing that the miners had entered the mine without permission, authorities reportedly cracked down by cutting off their access to food and water.

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) -South African authorities have pulled at least 60 bodies from the shaft of a closed gold mine more than 2 km (1.2 miles) underground where an unknown number of men are still feared trapped,

South African police have launched a manhunt for a Lesotho gang member believed to have controlled operations at an illegal gold mine where 78 bodies were recovered last week during a police siege, from which he escaped.

By Nellie Peyton JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) -South African police are hunting a gang leader from Lesotho believed to have controlled operations at an illegal gold mine where 78 bodies were recovered last week after months of police siege.