The police have cut off food and water to miners for weeks in a bid to force them out of an abandoned mine. Human rights advocates and community leaders call the tactics inhumane.

A South African court on Saturday ordered an end to the police blockade of a former gold mine, where hundreds, possibly thousands, of illegal miners are thought to be underground .

South Africa's government says it won't help a group of illegal miners inside a closed mine in the country's North West province who have been denied access to basic supplies as part of an official strategy against illegal mining.