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JOHANNESBURG, Aug 11 : Fourteen clandestine miners were killed and eight seriously hurt after a rockfall in a disused mine in South Africa where they were working, police said Tuesday.

There were no details yet of the miners, including their nationalities, as officials were still headed to the site, provincial police spokeswoman Colonel Adele Myburgh told AFP.

"Fourteen illegal miners dead at disused mine," a police statement said. Another eight miners were seriously injured, Myburgh told AFP.

The disaster was near the town of Rustenburg, about 100 kilometres (60 miles) northwest of Johannesburg.

Thousands of unregistered miners known as "zama zamas" operate in South Africa, scavenging abandoned mines for gold and other minerals in arduous and often perilous conditions.

They come from across southern Africa, driven by poverty and unemployment, and the sector has been linked to organised crime, assassinations, extortion and other illegal activities.

"It's not safe where they work in any way. So it's one of those situations where they had a rock fall," Myburgh said.

"They go into discarded mine shafts ... it's so dilapidated, there's no infrastructure, there's no safety measures in place," she said.