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

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.

Several hundred people are believed to remain in an illegal mine in South Africa after the government cut off vital supplies and refused to help them, in a dramatic bid to crack down on the industry.