Sixty bodies have been removed from a disused gold shaft in South Africa.

This is months into a campaign to try to clear out illegal miners, police said yesterday.

Authorities began trying to remove the bodies and bring up survivors on Monday after residents voiced fears that over 100 people may have died in the mine in Stilfontein, about 140 kilometres (90 miles) southwest of Johannesburg.

“On day two of operations, a total of 106 alive illegal miners were retrieved and arrested for illegal mining. Fifty-one were certified dead,” police said in a statement. 

Nine bodies had been removed the previous day.

The mine runs 2.6 kilometres (1.6 miles) underground. 

A specialised machine was brought on Monday to lift out the miners and the bodies, a handful of people at a time.

South Africans call these miners “zama zamas,”  “those who try” in the Zulu language. 

They are often migrants from neighbouring countries, accused by residents of criminality.

Police have voiced fears that hundreds more could remain underground. 

However, at a visit to the site on Tuesday, police minister Senzo Mchunu declined to estimate how many could be there.

“There is no way on earth anyone can come and say ‘I know for certain that there are so many. Every number that we have here is an estimate. It is a guess,” he said.

A video sent to AFP on Monday by Macua, a group that advocates for the miners, appeared to show dozens of corpses wrapped in cloth in the mine chambers.

More than 1 500 illegal miners have been arrested at Stilfontein since August when authorities first started to remove them. 

South Africa has deported 121 of them, police said.

The survivors have appeared emaciated, their legs reduced to skin and bones.

Authorities had at one point tried cutting off food and water supplies to the mine to force out the miners.

 But a court ordered in November that police must end all restrictions at the shaft, allowing people above ground to resume lowering food and water to those below. -Nampa/ AFP