South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Monday lives should not be put at risk in a standoff between police and hundreds of illegal miners stuck underground in a disused mine shaft and the miners should be recovered safely.

A South African court ordered police to end a standoff with illegal miners and allow emergency workers to gain access to a shaft where hundreds are believed to be holed up. The High Court in Pretoria,

The police have cut off food and water to miners for weeks in a bid to force them out of an abandoned mine. Human rights advocates and community leaders call the tactics inhumane.

A court says emergency workers must be allowed to enter a mine where hundreds are thought to be without food and water.

A South African court on Saturday ordered an end to the police blockade of a former gold mine, where hundreds, possibly thousands, of illegal miners are thought to be underground.