A South African court ordered police to end a standoff with illegal miners to allow emergency workers to gain access to a mine shaft where several hundred are believed to remain after the government cut off vital supplies.

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

The government is trying to starve more than 1,000 informal prospectors out of a shaft of the Buffelsfontein mine, which police say extends some 8,000 feet below ground.

South African police were in a standoff on Thursday with hundreds of illegal miners believed to be underground in a disused shaft, a day after a cabinet minister said the government was trying to "smoke them out".

Officials are blocking access to basic supplies for hundreds of people underground in a northwest mine shaft as part of a crackdown on miners.

Around the gaping shaft of a disused mine, the South African police on Saturday waited to pounce on anyone trying to escape to the surface. Their siege has gone on for weeks, trying to flush out hundreds of men accused of illegal mining in an abandoned gold mine,