The miners are suspected to have died of starvation and dehydration, although no causes of death have been released.

South African authorities have ome under intense scrutiny for their response after civic groups said hundreds of miners have been trapped deep in an abandoned gold mine for months

No more illegal miners are believed to be trapped underground at a gold mine in South Africa, volunteers working with rescue teams have said.

The death toll in a monthslong standoff between police and miners trapped while working illegally in an abandoned gold mine in South Africa has risen to at least 87, police said Thursday as they wound down a rescue operation that has pulled more than 240 survivors out from deep underground.

South African police lowered a camera down more than a mile (1.5 km) underground into an illegal gold mine on Thursday to ascertain if any survivors or corpses were still there after a months-long siege by authorities in which at least 78 miners died.

By Nellie Peyton and Xolani Nhlapo STILFONTEIN, South Africa (Reuters) -South African rescuers ended their attempts on Thursday to find anyone left in an illegal gold mine where at least 78 people died during a police siege,

A group representing informal miners in South Africa says at least 100 men who were mining illegally in an abandoned gold mine have died after being trapped deep underground for months while police tried to get them out.

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

It will be a "mammoth task" to identify the bodies brought up from a disused mineshaft in South Africa this week, a police spokesperson says. Seventy-eight corpses, along with more than 240 illegal miners,