The death toll from a toxic gas leak that authorities blamed on an illegal gold processing operation in South Africa has risen to 17, including three children.
Police at the scene have removed canisters from a community of closely packed shacks and have been sifting through evidence.
The leak of what authorities said was a toxic nitrate gas happened on Wednesday night in the informal Angelo settlement in Boksburg, a city on the eastern outskirts of Johannesburg.
The three children who died were aged one, six and 15, police said.
At least 10 people were taken to hospital, including a two-month-old baby, two four-year-olds and a nine-year-old, according to Panyaza Lesufi, the premier of the province of Gauteng, who gave an update on Thursday.
A statement from South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s office said it was a “devastating and tragic loss of innocent lives”.
Bodies remained on the ground, some of them covered in sheets or blankets, for hours after the gas leak was reported as emergency service responders waited for forensic investigators and pathologists to do their work.
“It’s not a nice scene at all. It’s painful, emotionally draining and tragic,” Said Mr Lesufi as he visited the settlement.
Search teams combed the area deep into the night looking for other possible casualties.
Authorities did not say if the people engaged in the illegal gold processing thought to have caused the gas leak were among the dead, but police opened a criminal case.
Investigators made their way through narrow alleys between shacks and other makeshift homes that were dark due to a lack of streetlights, a common situation in the deeply impoverished informal settlements found in and around South Africa’s cities.
This is the cylinder that caused the #BoksburgGasLeak pic.twitter.com/MKCQBksRll
— Panyaza Lesufi (@Lesufi) July 5, 2023
Emergency services spokesman William Ntladi said the deaths were caused by the inhalation of nitrate gas that leaked from a gas cylinder being kept in a shack where illegal miners were separating gold from rock and dirt. He said the leak had emptied the canister.
Mr Lesufi tweeted videos that showed the dusty inside of the shack and at least four gas cylinders on metal stands. The footage included what Mr Lesufi said was the cylinder that leaked lying on the floor next to the shack’s entrance.
The search teams concentrated on an area stretching out 100 metres from the cylinder to check for more dead or injured people, Mr Ntaldi said.
Police later began tearing down the shack, and Mr Lesufi said all gas cylinders were removed from the site.
Illegal mining is rife in the gold-rich areas around Johannesburg, where miners go into closed off and disused mines to search for any deposits left over. They then attempt to process some of that gold in secret, often in makeshift and highly dangerous facilities.
Mining fatalities underground are also common and the South African government department responsible for mining announced recently that at least 31 illegal miners were believed to have died in a gas explosion in a disused mine in the city of Welkom in central South Africa in May.
The cause was methane gas, the mining department said.
