At least 16 people, including three children, died when toxic gas leaked from a cylinder near Johannesburg, South African police have said. Emergency services said the leak appeared to be linked to illegal mining activities.
Emergency services initially announced that as many as 24 people might be dead in the Angelo informal settlement in Boksburg, a city on the eastern outskirts of Johannesburg. But police and Gauteng Province premier Panyaza Lesufi later said the number of deaths had been confirmed as 16 after a recount of the bodies. Police said the three children killed were aged one, six and 15. Two people were taken to the hospital for treatment, police said.
Search and rescue teams were still working through the area trying to ascertain the extent of the casualties.
Emergency services spokesperson William Ntladi said the initial information authorities had indicated the gas in the cylinders was being used by illegal miners to process gold inside a shack. A photograph of multiple gas cylinders set up in a shack dwelling was published in local media.
Johannesburg’s vast network of disused gold mines are used by zama zamas – “those who try their luck”, in isiZulu – hoping to find gold, which is then processed above ground. Just under a third of all of the gold ever mined has come from Johannesburg’s Witwatersrand mines. There are as many as 30,000 illegal miners working in South Africa, according to a report by the South African Human Rights Commussion, and hundreds have died in mine shaft collapses, gas leaks and battles between illegal miners and workers employed by mine owners.
Ntladi said the deaths were caused by a leak from a gas cylinder being kept in a shack in the Angelo settlement. He said the leak had stopped and teams were searching a 100-metre radius around the cyclinder to check for more casualties.
The bodies were still lying on the ground “in and around the area”, Ntladi said, and forensic investigators and pathologists were on their way to the scene.
“We can’t move anybody,” Ntladi said. “The bodies are still where they are on the ground.”
The growth in illegal mining has been attributed to the country’s high unemployment rate and the mining industry’s collapse due to depleted reserves, a decline in commodity prices, rising employment costs and unreliable power supplies.
