The prospectors were trapped underground for months as police, on orders from South Africa’s government, attempted to starve them out.

Rescuers continued retrieving bodies Wednesday from an abandoned South African gold mine with hundreds more still believed to be underground, many of them dead and others too weak to come out on their own.

Authorities launched an operation in November to force the illegally operating miners out by cutting off food and water from the surface for a time. Hundreds are thought to remain underground.