Nine bodies of illegal miners recovered at Welkom mine

This brings to 12 the number of dead miners whose bodies have been recovered at the mine owned by Harmony Gold.

The police's Stephen Thakeng says they are working together with other authorities to determine the cause of death, but that they suspect exposure to gases underground may have played a role.

He says an inquest docket has been opened.

"That brings the number to twelve because on Tuesday last week we got three bodies that were almost in the decomposed state.

"At this stage we have got name tags on each body that were put [on] by these illegal miners underground. So in other words, now we know that these dead bodies are from the Thaba-Tseka [District] in Lesotho so they are all Lesotho nationals", he said.