In this task, you are given a text of many news articles seperated by special token "|||||". Your task is to summarize them.

Riah Phiyega said that 34 miners were killed on Thursday and another 78 wounded when her officers used “maximum force” near Marikana mine, owned by Lonmin, the London-listed company. 
  
 They did so when a gang of “heavily armed” miners rushed towards them, armed with firearms as well as clubs and machetes. “Police retreated and were forced to use maximum force to defend themselves,” said Ms Phiyega. 
  
 South Africans have been appalled by the violence, which summons memories of the apartheid era and has been compared with the Sharpeville massacre of 1960. But Ms Phiyega said: “This is no time for blaming, this is no time for finger-pointing. This is a time for us to mourn the sad and dark moment that we experienced as a country. 
  
 President Jacob Zuma has left a summit of African leaders and travelled back to South Africa. 
  
 Police were called in after thousands of miners gathered at Marikana, about 62 miles north-west of Johannesburg. 
  
 Images broadcast by private television station e.tv carried the sound of a barrage of automatic gunfire that ended with police officers shouting: "Cease fire!" By that time, bodies were lying in the dust, some pouring blood. Another image showed some miners, their eyes wide, looking in the distance at heavily armed police officers in riot gear. 
  
 It was a harrowing development in a country that had been seen as a model of stability since white rule ended with South Africa's first free elections in 1994. The shooting recalled images of white police firing at anti-apartheid protesters in the 1960s and 1970s, but in this case it was mostly black police firing at black mine workers. 
  
 Several commentators said members of the new union, the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU), had guns and other weapons and used them when the shooting began. 
  
 Joseph Mathunjwa, the union's president blamed Lonmin, the London-list company which runs the mine, and said the huge National Union of Mineworkers collaborated against the striking workers. 
  
 He denied his members played any role in the violence. AMCU does not yet have enough members to be registered as a union. 
  
 "This violence involves 2,000 workers but there are more than 20,000 other workers who are suffering from this now," said NUM president Frans Baleni. 
  
 (EPA) 
  
 Zwelinzima Vavi, General Secretary of the Congress of South African Trade Unions said: "This is the worst news, we have never experienced that kind of massacre before. 
  
 "We were not involved with the strike action or the violence. 
  
 "This violence has been running in those mines since January, it was sparked by some rivalry. 
  
 "The National Union of Mineworkers has been established for many, many years, and is always engaged in wage negotiations, including last year. 
  
 "A new union arrived and made fresh demands for a 200 percent increase in wages for certain categories of workers, and those demands were very attractive to many. 
  
 "So this union started to recruit very aggressively and violence was meted out against NUM. 
  
 "Every day a body was found in the squatter camps around the mine, and the police had been ineffective in picking people up who did that violence." 
  
 A paramedic receives help from a policewomen as he tends to the injured after protesting miners were shot outside a South African mine in Rustenburg (Reuters) 
  
 Mr Vavi said the dead picked up in the squatter camps were usually workers associated with NUM. 
  
 Helen Zille, Democratic Alliance leader said: "This is an absolute tragedy, the worst we have had in a democratic South Africa. We need an independent inquiry and there is a clear picture from our TV screens of what happened." ||||| MARIKANA, South Africa The police killing of 34 striking platinum miners in the bloodiest security operation since the end of white rule cut to the quick of South Africa's psyche on Friday, with searching questions asked of its post-apartheid soul. 
  
 Newspaper headlines screamed "Bloodbath", "Killing Field" and "Mine Slaughter", with graphic photographs of heavily armed white and black police officers walking casually past the bloodied corpses of black men lying crumpled in the dust. 
  
 The images, along with Reuters TV footage of officers opening up with automatic weapons on a small group of men in blankets and t-shirts at Lonmin's Marikana platinum plant, rekindled uncomfortable memories of South Africa's racist past. 
  
 Police chief Riah Phiyega confirmed 34 dead and 78 injured in Thursday's shootings after officers moved against 3,000 striking drill operators armed with machetes and sticks at the mine, 100 km (60 miles) northwest of Johannesburg. 
  
 A somber-looking President Jacob Zuma, who cut short a trip to Mozambique for a regional summit because of the violence, travelled to Marikana and announced he had ordered an official inquiry into what he called the "shocking" events. 
  
 "This is unacceptable in our country which is a country where everyone feels comfortable, a country with a democracy that everyone envies," he said in a statement read at a news conference. He did not take questions. 
  
 Phiyega, a former banking executive appointed to lead the police force only in June, said officers acted in self-defense against charging, armed assailants at Marikana. 
  
 "The police members had to employ force to protect themselves," she said, noting that two policemen had been hacked to death by a mob at the mine on Tuesday. 
  
 However, the South African Institute of Race Relations likened the incident to the 1960 Sharpeville township massacre near Johannesburg, when apartheid police opened fire on a crowd of black protesters, killing more than 50. 
  
 "Obviously the issues that have led to this are not the same as the past, but the response and the outcome is very similar," research manager Lucy Holborn told Reuters. 
  
 In a front-page editorial, the Sowetan newspaper questioned what had changed since 1994, when Nelson Mandela overturned three centuries of white domination to become South Africa's first black president. 
  
 "It has happened in this country before where the apartheid regime treated black people like objects," the paper, named after South Africa's biggest black township, said. "It is continuing in a different guise now." 
  
 Zuma, who faces an internal leadership election in his ruling African National Congress (ANC) in December, called on South Africa to mourn together. "It is a moment to start healing and rebuilding," he said at Marikana. 
  
 "We believe there is enough space in our democratic order for any dispute to be resolved through dialogue without any breaches of the law or violence," an earlier statement from him said. 
  
 Despite promises of a better life for all South Africa's 50 million people, the ANC has struggled to provide basic services to millions in poor black townships. 
  
 Efforts to redress the economic inequalities of apartheid have had mixed results, and the mining sector comes in for particular criticism from radical ANC factions as a bastion of "white monopoly capital". 
  
 In Washington, the White House said it was saddened by the loss of life. "We encourage all parties to work together to resolve the situation peacefully," spokesman Josh Earnest said. 
  
 POLICE PRESENCE 
  
 Hundreds of police patrolled the dusty plains around the Marikana mine, which was forced to shut down this week because of a rumbling union turf war that has hit the platinum sector this year. 
  
 Crime scene investigators combed the site of the shooting, which was cordoned off with yellow tape, collecting spent cartridges and the slain miners' bloodstained traditional weapons - machetes and spears. 
  
 Six firearms were recovered, including a service revolver from one of the police officers killed earlier in the week. 
  
 Before Thursday, 10 people had died in nearly a week of conflict between rival unions at what is Lonmin's flagship plant. The London-headquartered company has been forced to shut down all its South African platinum operations, which account for 12 percent of global output. 
  
 South Africa is home to 80 percent of the world's known reserves of platinum, a precious metal used in vehicle catalytic converters. Rising power and labor costs and a steep decline this year in the price have left many mines struggling to stay afloat. 
  
 Although the striking Marikana miners were demanding huge pay hikes, the roots of the trouble lie in a challenge by the newer Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) to the 25-year dominance of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), a close ANC ally. 
  
 "There is clearly an element in this that a key supporter of the ANC - the NUM - has come under threat from these protesting workers," said Nic Borain, an independent political analyst. 
  
 Pre-crackdown footage of dancing miners waving machetes and licking the blades of home-made spears raised questions about the habitual use of violence in industrial action 18 years after the end of apartheid. 
  
 "This culture of violence and protest, it must somehow be changed," said John Robbie, a prominent Johannesburg radio host. "You can't act like a Zulu impi in an industrial dispute in this day and age," he said, using the Zulu word for armed units. 
  
 World platinum prices spiked nearly 3 percent on Thursday as the full extent of the violence became clear, and rose again on Friday to a five-week high above $1,450 an ounce. 
  
 Lonmin shares in London and Johannesburg fell more than 5 percent to four-year lows at Friday's market open, although later trimmed their losses. Overall, they have shed nearly 15 percent since the violence began a week ago. 
  
 (Additional reporting by Laura MacInnis in Washington; Writing by Ed Cropley; Editing by Pascal Fletcher and Pravin Char) |||||
The death toll has risen to more than 35 in yesterday's shooting of striking South African miners by police, which has become one of the deadliest confrontations since the end of apartheid, reports the Telegraph. The country's police minister says many others were injured and the toll is likely to rise. Another 10 people, including two police officers and two security guards, died in related violence earlier in the week. As strikers marched on the mine 40 miles northwest of Johannesburg yesterday, police tried breaking up the march with water cannons, then stun grenades and tear gas, but opened fire when a group of machete-armed miners charged police lines. The violence has shocked South Africa, with newspapers blaring headlines like "Bloodbath", "Killing Field," and "Mine Slaughter" and featuring graphic photos, reports Reuters. "It has happened in this country before where the apartheid regime treated black people like objects," wrote one newspaper in a front-page editorial. "It is continuing in a different guise now." Other critics blamed unions for the violence. South African President Jacob Zuma strongly condemned the violence, while avoiding direct criticism of the police. "We believe there is enough space in our democratic order for any dispute to be resolved through dialogue without any breaches of the law or violence," said Zuma, adding that he was "shocked and dismayed at this senseless violence."