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.

A community rescue effort to help illegal miners trapped in a mine shaft in South Africa emerged after police said they wouldn't help.