Around 4,000 illegal miners, 700 of whom are Mozambican, are trapped more than 2,000 meters underground in an abandoned mine in Stilfontein, in South Africa's North West province.

According to Rádio Moçambique, the illegal miners were trapped when they broke into a gold mine that had been abandoned for several years.

This week, the South African government decided to block water and food supplies in order to force them to leave the site because it was considered dangerous.

"We received a complaint from the owner of the mine and the Department of Mineral Resources that this abandoned mine is unsafe because there are fumes inside. The terrain is also unsafe, and it is not expected that there will be [people] going down to do heavy mining work," the police explained to South African television, NewRoom.

In addition to the 700 illegal Mozambican miners, others come from Zimbabwe, Lesotho and South Africa itself, writes the Mozambican public broadcaster.

"Our responsibility here is to prevent crime, and that's exactly what we're doing, as SAPS. We are preventing illegal mining, preventing them from going down to mine and we are preventing food and water from being sent into the mine, to prevent them from continuing to work," said the police authorities.

Family members of some of the miners remain at the site to pressure the South African authorities to help remove them without cutting off access to water and food.

It should be noted that last August, 1,200 miners left the site in a similar operation carried out by the police.