JOHANNESBURG—At least 16 people, including three children, were killed by a leak of a toxic  being used by illegal miners to process gold in a settlement of closely packed metal shacks, South African police, and local officials said late Wednesday.
Emergency services initially announced that as many as 24 people might be dead in the Angelo settlement in Boksburg, a city on the eastern outskirts of Johannesburg. But police and Gauteng Province Premier Panyaza Lesufi later said the number of deaths had been confirmed as 16 after a recount of the bodies.
“It’s not a nice scene at all … It’s painful, emotionally draining and tragic,” Mr. Lesufi, who visited the scene, was quoted as saying in news reports….