(17 Jan 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Stilfontein, South Africa – 15 January 2025
1. Wide of forensic officials loading body bags onto truck
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Stilfontein, South Africa – 16 January 2025
2. Close of mine rescue workers pulling a cage used to pull out the deceased and miners who survived
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Stilfontein, South Africa – 15 January 2025
3. SOUNDBITE (Setswana) Anonymous miner working illegally:
"The police were standing at the top and we could no longer get any food supplies and that is when the problem of people getting sick started, others died and there were more dead bodies. That’s when we realized it’s becoming bad, it’s like you are in a scary movie but the painful thing was that it was reality and actually happening."
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Stilfontein, South Africa – 16 January 2025
4. Close of shaft where hundreds of bodies and recoveries were made by rescue mine workers
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Stilfontein, South Africa – 15 January 2025
5. Forensic pathology vehicles in Stilfotein
6. SOUNDBITE (Setswana) Mmastona Mbizana, Mother of two sons mining illegally:
"The mine is what’s keeping us alive because we don’t go hungry. We didn’t think that it wasn’t work because my sons saw it as a job. We knew that around the end of the month, I would go to the mall and buy groceries and finish other plans. But now, everything has stopped."
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Stilfontein, South Africa – 16 January 2025
7. Wide of truck used to pull dead miners from under ground
STORYLINE:
A South African miner trapped underground after a police crackdown on illegal working said the ordeal felt like a "scary movie."
Speaking anonymously to The Associated Press, he said people started to get sick or die after food supplies were cut off.
"That’s when we realized it’s becoming bad, it’s like you are in a scary movie," he said.
The tragedy at the abandoned gold mine near the town of Stilfontein began to unfold in August, when police cut off food supplies for a period of time to the miners working illegally in the mine’s tunnels.
The tactic was apparently meant to force them out but instead caused dozens to die of starvation or dehydration, according to groups representing the miners.
A court ordered a rescue operation that was launched on Monday and more than 240 survivors were hauled out this week in small groups in a metal cage, some of them badly emaciated after more than five months below the surface. All the survivors were arrested, police said.
Police have denied any responsibility for the deaths and insisted the miners were not trapped but were able to escape through several shafts in the mine.
South African authorities have for years struggled to stop groups of miners from going into some of the gold-rich country’s 6,000 abandoned or closed mines to search for leftover deposits. According to officials, South Africa lost more than $3 billion in gold to the illicit trade last year.
AP Video by Alfonso Nqunjana
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