South Africa Frees Miners After Murder Charges Shelved

South Africa released on Monday the first of 270 miners detained more than two weeks ago after police shot dead 34 of their colleagues in a bid to break up a wildcat strike at Lonmin's Marikana platinum mine.

The men were charged last week under an obscure apartheid-era security law with murdering their fellow miners, although state prosecutors withdrew the charges at the weekend following a public outcry.

The August 16 shootings were the deadliest security incident since the end of white-minority rule in 1994.

The Marikana shooting, which local media dubbed a massacre, shocked South Africa and marred the image of Africa's biggest economy as the full extent of a breakdown in labour relations in the mining sector became apparent. World platinum prices have risen nearly 10 percent since the shooting.