South Africa's president is facing calls to order an 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.

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.

The clampdown on illegal mining cut off food and water to hundreds of miners underground. At least 78 bodies were pulled from a mining shaft this week, and more are believed to remain underground.

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.

The miners are suspected to have died of starvation and dehydration, although no causes of death have been released.

By Siyabonga Sishi and Nellie Peyton STILFONTEIN, South Africa (Reuters) - South African rescuers were making final efforts on Thursday to ascertain whether anyone was left in an illegal gold mine deep underground where at least 78 people died during a police siege,

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.

It will be a "mammoth task" to identify the bodies brought up from a disused mineshaft in South Africa this week, a police spokesperson says. Seventy-eight corpses, along with more than 240 illegal miners,

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.