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Five families have come forward to identify illegal miners who died in Stilfontein’s abandoned mine shafts in North West Province.
A total of 87 bodies have been recovered from the disused mines since last August.
Government says the others will receive pauper’s burials if they remain unclaimed.
The bodies are being kept at various mortuaries across the province. Most of the bodies were retrieved from an abandoned shaft at the Buffelsfontein gold mine in January.
The North West department of Health has confirmed that fingerprints, DNA samples, images and other identifiers of the deceased are being archived in case family members come forward later, and the bodies have already been buried.
