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.

The police have cut off food and water to miners for weeks in a bid to force them out of an abandoned mine. Human rights advocates and community leaders call the tactics inhumane.

Authorities in South Africa have cut off supplies to nearly 4,000 illegal gold miners hiding underground, as the government is making an effort to "smoke them out" and arrest them, officials announced Thursday.