South Africa mine explosion: 'Still too dangerous' to retrieve 31 bodies

this is where more than 30 miners mostly from neighboring Lesotho who work illegally entered a mine shaft to look for gold it's an abandoned ventilation shaft owned by a company called Harmony gold the workers who went down illegally never came out a month later the government says they were killed in a methane gas explosion it says gas levels are still too dangerous to look for the

bodies lost two family members in the mines [Music] this group of men told us off camera some of them mine illegally too they say they rescued Two Men and Days Later returned to retrieve three bodies celebalo shows us this video his watching mind Vehicles drive off from the scene he says they threw what he calls a bomb underground um people who were there say a group

of white men arrived while we weren't there they say that they arrived about 20 minutes later then they heard a Bang from the hole and after that they sent us a message and so we left Lesotho to come here a spokesperson for harmony gold denies the allegations saying the company has in the past helped rescue miners trapped underground those miners were then arrested for working illegally

the company also says the latest incident is under criminal investigation aside from the safety issues associated with illegal mining many of these miners belong to gangs and are involved in often violent turf wars there are thousands of abandoned mines across South Africa many of them still contain gold and minerals but are not financially viable for industrial mining they continue to attract informal miners hoping to make

their own fortune this group calls itself artisanal miners they also operate illegally and sell the gold they mine on the black market they want the government to change its rules to allow them to work within the law but until that happens tens of thousands of unofficial miners remain underground family Al Jazeera Virginia South Africa