A body was brought out of an abandoned South African gold mine as police tried to evict hundreds of illegal miners hiding out in the workings.
Authorities have spent weeks trying to “smoke them out” to bring an end to the underground standoff in the town of Stilfontein, south-west of Johannesburg, by stopping deliveries of food and water to the mine.
More than 1,100 people have resurfaced since the start of the operation named “Close the Hole”, including two who emerged on Thursday.
But residents claim as many as 4,000, who are said to be sick and increasingly weak, could still be below ground.
Police, who say it is too dangerous to enter the mine to make arrests, have said this number is “far-fetched” and put the total closer to 300.
The government on Wednesday said it would not send any help to the illegal miners.
“We are not sending help to criminals. We are going to smoke them out. They will come out. Criminals are not to be helped. We didn’t send them there,” Cabinet Minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni told reporters.
Police on Thursday continued to enforce a wide cordon around the closed mine as they hunted for miners as they emerged.
Athlenda Mathe, the national police spokesman, said: “We do have a decomposed body that was brought up this afternoon. Circumstances surrounding how this illegal miner died are under investigation.”
The body is the first to be retrieved from the mine, she said.
The government has taken a hard line on the miners, who are known locally as Zama Zamas, which translates roughly as those who take a chance, or those who try.
Many are migrants from neighbouring countries who, without the ability to find legal work, enter disused mines to try to eke out whatever minerals are left.
Any gold they find is smuggled out of the country in a practice said to result in huge revenue losses for the government and the mining sector.
Their encampments are often blamed for local crime, including murders, robberies and rapes.
There have also been turf wars between rival outfits, who are often backed by powerful organised crime networks.
Ms Mathe said authorities wanted the miners to leave and would not enter the shaft because of hazardous gases and information that the miners had weapons.
“We are told by intelligence that they are refusing to resurface. No one is trapped.” It was unclear how long the miners had been underground,” she said.
Promises to tackle Zama Zamas have become a mainstay of campaigning by anti-immigration politicians in South Africa.
Around the police cordon, many of those watching said they too had relatives below ground.
One woman who gave her name as Betty Thulo said more than 10 of her relatives remained underground, including her in-laws, uncles and nephews.
“Some have been underground for more than a year, others have been there for five to seven months,” she said.
She said she had been able to communicate with them until police launched their operation. “It all went quiet once the police started with their nonsense operation. We stopped hearing from them and have no idea what happened.”
Ms Thulo continued: “We were told that things are bad down there, people have died and others are on the brink of death. They can’t move around because their torches no longer have batteries.
“We’re not denying the police the right to do their job, but the way they are doing it, they’ve killed our loved ones and have blood on their hands. They’ve also taken away our financial security and safety.”
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