JOHANNESBURG -- A total of 246 survivors and 78 bodies have been brought to the ground over three days of rescue operation at an abandoned gold mine in South Africa, the police said Wednesday night.

In a statement issued at 8:00 pm Wednesday, the South African Police Service (SAPS) said that 246 illegal miners had been retrieved alive from underground and had been arrested since the rescue operation commenced on Monday at the Stilfontein mine in the North West Province. The number of bodies recovered stood at 78, the same as the previous update released at 4:00 pm.

"We cannot say for sure that the operation has been called off at this stage," SAPS national spokesperson Athlenda Mathe told Xinhua.

She made the remarks after volunteers involved in the rescue operation told the media that there were no more survivors or bodies underground.

Mathe said the Mine Rescue Service, which has been responsible for the operation in Stilfontein, would send a cage underground on Thursday morning "to see if any illegal miners resurface with the cage."

"We will rely on the Mine Rescue Service to confirm this with their state-of-the-art equipment. That will hopefully be able to give us a picture of what is happening underground," she clarified. "We have indicated that as the SAPS, we have to verify this."

The spokesperson added that the police would provide further updates on the rescue operation Thursday morning.

The situation at the disused mine shafts in Stilfontein has been developing since August 2024, when small groups of illegal miners began emerging from the shafts. Since then, at least 1,576 illegal miners have come to the surface and been arrested, with the majority of them being foreign nationals from neighboring countries, according to earlier police statements.

Many gold mines in South Africa that were closed over the decades due to declining production have been taken over by illegal foreign miners who reopen them in search of gold.