The World - News from Oct. 27, 1986

A cable on an empty mine-shaft elevator snapped in a gold mine near Johannesburg, sending the cage hurtling 2,600 feet to the bottom of the shaft and killing six miners, officials said. Four others were seriously injured, and 22 men cutting a ventilation channel were trapped briefly. K.W. Maxwell, chairman of the Randfontein Estates Gold Mining Co. Ltd., said it took rescue workers seven hours to reach the dead and injured. It was the first serious gold mine accident since Sept. 16, when 177 men died in a fire in the worst disaster in South Africa’s 100-year gold-mining history.