South Africa's president is facing calls to order an inquiry into a police operation that was meant to combat illegal mining but ended up leaving 87 miners to die underground as authorities attempted to force them to surrender during a monthslong standoff.

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.

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.

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,

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 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.

At least 78 dead bodies have been pulled from an illegal gold mine in South Africa where police cut off food and water supplies for months, in what trade unions called a "horrific" crackdown on desperate people trying to eke out a living.

A miner who spent six months in a disused mine in South Africa has spoken of the horror he experienced after a police operation cut off food and basic supplies to thousands who were illegally digging

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

In South Africa a months long stand-off between police and illegal miners in an abandoned gold mine comes to end, with close to 80 found dead in grim recovery operation.