Sixty miners have been trapped overnight in an underground gold mine in southern Ecuador after an explosion there killed at least one person, officials said.

Police in South Africa say the bodies of 23 miners killed by an underground fire last week have been recovered. A police spokesman says the miners were working illegally at a mine in Free State province when the fire broke out on Tuesday.

The last of 3,200 miners trapped deep in a South African mine shaft have come to the surface, capping a day-long rescue mission that began with fears of the worst and ended in wild celebrations.

An operation to rescue more than 3,000 trapped miners in South Africa is proceeding well and so far 1,650 miners have made it to the surface.

Thousands of miners were being painstakingly brought to the surface after spending hours trapped more than two kilometres underground at a gold mine in South Africa.

Mining Accident in South Africa Traps 3,000 In a Gold Mine; Rescue Operations Under Way.

Could tons of neurotoxic mercury now stored in the United States wind up in the hands of poverty-stricken gold miners in developing countries and eventually be released into the environment, where it could end up entering the human food chain" An article scheduled for the May 28 issue of Chemical & Engineering News, ACS' weekly newsmagazine, explores that possibility in a script that reads like an environmental version of the hit film, Blood Diamond.