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At the least 31 individuals, suspected to be unlawful miners, are believed to have died final month in an deserted South African gold mine, the federal government stated on Friday twenty third June 2023. The deaths occurred within the air flow shaft at an deserted web site within the gold mining city of Welkom, 260 kilometres (160 miles) from Johannesburg, the Division of Mineral Sources and Vitality (DMRE) stated.
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The fatalities are believed to be unlawful miners who had come from neighbouring Lesotho, a tiny kingdom surrounded by South Africa, it stated. “We’re receiving studies that different suspected unlawful miners have assisted in retrieving a minimum of three our bodies, so 28 are believed to nonetheless be underground,” DMRE spokesman Ernest Mulibana instructed AFP. The deaths probably occurred on Could 18, though the trigger stays unknown. A search group has not been dispatched to the shaft for security causes, Mulibana stated. “Given the excessive ranges of methane, it’s at the moment dangerous for anybody to go down,” he stated.
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Lesotho’s overseas ministry alerted South Africa’s Excessive Fee in Maseru on June 10, however the incident was solely introduced by Pretoria in an in a single day assertion on Thursday. The explanation for the delay was unknown. The mine was beforehand owned by Concord Gold Mining Firm, one in every of South Africa’s largest producers. It stopped operations within the Nineteen Nineties. 1000’s of unregistered miners referred to as “zama zamas” function in South Africa, scavenging out of date mines for gold. The circumstances are arduous and sometimes perilous. “Though it is a distinctive and unusual scenario,” a joint effort will “be sure that the suspected deceased unlawful miners are dropped at the floor,” the DMRE stated.
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zam/ri© Agence France-Presse
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