Police say the death toll in a monthslong standoff between authorities and miners trapped while working illegally underground at an abandoned gold mine in South Africa has risen to at least 87.

The clampdown on illegal mining cut off food and water to hundreds of miners underground. At least 78 bodies were pulled from a mining shaft this week, and more are believed to remain underground.

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.

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

Illegal mining is common in parts of gold-rich South Africa. Typically, undocumented miners known as zama zamas - from an isiZulu expression for "taking a chance" - move into mines abandoned by commercial miners and seek to extract whatever is left. Some are under the control of violent criminal gangs.

South African police have ended a rescue operation at an abandoned gold mine where hundreds of illegal miners were trapped for months and say they believe they have rescued all the survivors and retri

By Siyabonga Sishi and Nellie Peyton STILFONTEIN, South Africa (Reuters) - South African rescuers were making final efforts on Thursday to ascertain whether anyone was left in an illegal gold mine deep underground where at least 78 people died during a police siege,

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa is facing calls to order a national inquiry into a police operation that was meant to combat illegal mining but ended up leaving 87 miners to die underground as

The death toll in a monthslong standoff between police and miners trapped while working illegally underground at 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.