South African authorities have come under intense scrutiny for their response after civic groups said hundreds of miners have been trapped deep in an abandoned gold mine for months.

Illegal mining is common in parts of gold-rich South Africa. Typically, undocumented miners known as zama zamas - from an isiZulu expression for "taking a chance" - move into mines abandoned by commercial miners and seek to extract whatever is left. Some are under the control of violent criminal gangs.

A rescue team in South Africa has finished a recovery operation to find more than 200 miners trapped in an abandoned gold mine. CBS News foreign correspondent Chris Livesay reports.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa is facing calls to order a national inquiry into a police operation that was meant to combat illegal mining but ended up leaving 87 miners to die underground as authorities attempted to force them to surrender during a monthslong standoff.

A trade union federation has accused the South African government of wilful negligence.Police in South Africa said Thursday that the death toll at an illegal mining operation in the North West province had risen to at least 78.

The death toll in a monthslong standoff between police and miners trapped while working illegally in an abandoned gold mine in South Africa has risen to at least 87, police said Thursday as they wound down a rescue operation that has pulled more than 240 survivors out from deep underground.

Rescuers recovered 51 additional bodies from an abandoned gold mine in South Africa on Tuesday, raising the death toll to 60 after nine bodies were retrieved on Monday, the first day of a massive rescue operation.