(Security): Toxic Gas leak in South Africa has killed 16 People, including 3 Children

At least 16 people, including three children, were killed by a leak of a toxic nitrate gas being used by illegal miners to process gold in a settlement of closely packed metal shacks, South African police and local officials said late Wednesday, July 4, 2023.

Emergency services initially announced that as many as 24 people might be dead in the Angelo settlement in Boksburg, a city on the eastern outskirts of Johannesburg. But police and Gauteng Province Premier Panyaza Lesufi later said the number of deaths had been confirmed as 16 after a recount of the bodies.

Teams were searching the area looking for other casualties deep into the night. The bodies of the victims remained lying on the ground hours after the leak was reported around 8 p.m. as emergency services waited for forensic investigators and pathologists to arrive to process the scene.

A forensic investigator was seen covering the body of a small child with a blanket. Another body could be seen covered in a white cloth with a shoe sticking out. It lay under a strip of yellow police tape cordoning off the area.

Police said the three children killed were aged 1, 6 and 15. Two people were taken to the hospital for treatment, police said.

Investigators were searching through narrow alleys between shacks, cast into darkness by the lack of streetlights - a common situation in the deeply impoverished informal settlements found in and around South Africa's cities. Six police cars, an armored vehicle and one ambulance were parked at the entrance to the Angelo settlement.

Illegal mining is rife in the gold-rich areas around Johannesburg, where miners go into closed off and disused mines to search for any deposits left over.

Mining fatalities underground are also common and the South African government department responsible for mining announced recently that at least 31 illegal miners were believed to have died in a gas explosion in a disused mine in the city of Welkom in central South Africa. The cause was methane gas, the mining department said.

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