A group of men and “young boys” gang raped eight women aged 19 to 37 years old at an abandoned mine near Krugersdorp, South Africa, last week, South Africa’s Sunday Times reported.

A large group of armed men and boys, whom authorities suspect were illegal miners known locally as “zama-zamas,” reportedly gang raped and robbed eight women while they attempted to film a music video at an abandoned mine on the outskirts of Krugersdorp on July 28. The men wore balaclavas and fired rounds into the air as they approached the women on the video shoot, most of whom were models hired for the day.

Two victims of the gang rape spoke to the Sunday Times on July 31 to share their ordeal. They said that they initially “tried to escape” the group of men but were “encircled and raped one by one.”

“The first person who was raped was me. The first time, they took me to the bush and the second time, they took me to a hole where no one could see us. They kept telling the younger boys to rape us and they’d hit them and force them to do so,” a woman who booked the models for the video shoot told the newspaper.

“The young boys would then take us, one by one, to the bushes. The last time they raped me was in front of the other group,” she said.

A 19-year-old victim of the crime told the Sunday Times that she “lied to her attacker that she had suffered a miscarriage to be saved from being raped further.”

“I had no way out but to lie, because they were picking us up one by one. There were others who were raped by six to 10 men,” she revealed.

The teenager said that her 21-year-old sister, “was raped in a hole” and estimated that the gang rape of the entire group of women “lasted four hours.”

“Young people there between 19 and 37 were raped, some by 10 men. You can imagine the trauma in that situation,” South African Police Minister Bheki Cele told eNews Channel Africa (eNCA) on July 30.

Local police officers reportedly arrived at the crime scene shortly after the mass gang rape concluded on July 28 and engaged in a brief shootout with some of the suspects.

South Africa’s News24 website detailed this aftermath on August 1, writing, “Police immediately launched an investigation into 32 counts of rape and one count of armed robbery, arresting suspects in big batches. In total, 82 men were arrested.”

“[T]wo suspects were killed and a third injured after allegedly pointing firearms at police,” according to News24.

The 82 men detained by police officers over the past few days have so far been charged with violating South Africa’s immigration act by illegally entering the country or with possession of stolen goods, according to News24 and Voice of America. It remains unclear how many of the arrested men, if any, were guilty of perpetrating the July 28 gang rape.

“I know many people have been arrested, but we need the real perpetrators. The evidence that has been collected by the police – biological evidence […] will have to help us to link the real perpetrators,” Cele told reporters on August 1.

The South African police minister told eNCA on July 30 that “DNA testing and identification parades will take place soon to see if any of the suspects were among the group that raped the women.”

“Surely our laboratories, which are grinding now, they will prioritise, work on that,” he added.

South Africa has the third-highest rape rate in the world, behind only Lesotho and Botswana. The nation documented nearly 11,000 rape cases within the first three months of 2022, News24 reported in June.