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South African cops hunt gang leader of prohibited mine where lots died

South African authorities are hunting a gang leader from Lesotho believed to have regulated operations at an unlawful cash cow where 78 bodies were recovered last week after months of authorities siege.

Tiger is believed to have actually emerged from the deep mine in Stilfontein while it was under authorities monitoring and escaped with the aid of authorities, the South African Police Service said on Monday.

Comprehensive investigations and tracing operations are under method to discover those authorities who aided his escape in between shaft 11 and the Stilfontein authorities holding cells, their statement said.

Cops were extensively condemned for the months-long operation, in which they cut off food and water in an effort to force the miners out and jail them.

Financing Minister Enoch Godongwana stated the state needs to not be delegated the deaths.

You have got individuals who voluntarily got in mines and did some unlawful activities and at the same time passed away inside those mines. To then return and say the state is going to take the blame for that, in my view, is misplaced, he told Reuters at the World Economic Forum's yearly conference in Davos, Switzerland.

The standoff culminated in a state-sponsored rescue last week in which 246 survivors were obtained from the mine, many emaciated and weak from appetite.

Police have cited miners who said there had actually been food underground, but that the gang leaders had actually kept it for themselves.

Thousands of people are believed to be mining gold unlawfully in abandoned commercial mines in South Africa. Some spend months at a time underground.

The operations are thought to be run by Lesotho-based gangs, and cops state some of the workers are illegal immigrants recruited from neighbouring nations without understanding what they have concerned do.

Miners named Tiger as a leader of operations, the police declaration said.

He is also being implicated by some illegal miners ...

(source: Reuters)