Mining company Sibanye-Stillwater says all workers are safe and have been provided with food as they await rescue.
Rescue efforts were under way in South Africa on Friday as more than 200 miners were trapped at a gold mine for a second day.
Mining company Sibanye-Stillwater said on Thursday that the miners were trapped after what it referred to as a “shaft incident” at the Kloof gold mine, one of the company’s deepest.
It said that all the workers were safe and gathered at an assembly point where they had been provided with food as efforts were being made to get them out.
“It was decided that employees should remain at the sub-shaft station until it is safe to proceed to the surface,” the company said.
The total number of workers trapped was not immediately clear. News agencies reported that 260 people were trapped, while a company spokesperson said 289 miners were in the shaft.
The National Union of Mineworkers, representing the workers at the Kloof mine, said they had been trapped for more than 24 hours as Sibanye-Stillwater continued pushing back its estimated time to retrieve the workers.
“We are very concerned because the mine did not even make this incident public until we reported it to the media,” said NUM spokesman Livhuwani Mammburu.
The mine, located 60km (37 miles) west of Johannesburg, is among a few collecting from some of the world’s deepest gold deposits.