Four more people who were trapped in a flooded cave in Laos for 10 days were brought out to safety on Saturday afternoon, Thai rescuers said.
The operation came hours after another man was rescued from the flooded cave on Friday night.
The five people rescued are among seven Lao nationals who had entered the cave, but two remained missing.
The Thailand Rescue Diver Facebook page said in a post that “rescue officials were able to bring out four more people trapped” at about 3.10pm on Saturday.
Lee Kian Lie, a Malaysian rescue diver, told AFP via Messenger that the four were freed after water was pumped out of the cavern.
A video he took from the scene showed teams under a makeshift tent attending to four people lying on stretchers and covered with thermal blankets.
The five men who have been rescued were located alive on Wednesday, huddling in a narrow shaft around 300 metres from the cave mouth.
Rescuers guided the first man, bedraggled and muddy, over unsteady ground to safety on Friday night.
Rescue efforts have focused on pumping out the monsoon floodwaters that trapped the men.
The Lao Saychai Foundation posted a video on its Facebook page of the man rescued on Friday, identified only as Meud, who said the two missing men had gone about 500 metres deeper into the cave than he had.
Asked whether he thought they were still alive, he said: “I’m afraid it’s too cold there.” (Story continues below)
The drama unfolding in Laos echoes the 2018 ordeal of the Wild Boars youth football team, which spent 18 days trapped in a cave in northern Thailand before a daring international rescue saved their lives — an operation followed by millions around the world.
Two of the divers involved in that retrieval of 12 young footballers and their coach — one Thai and one Finnish — have been working with Lao volunteers after local people requested specialist personnel and equipment.
Another team of specialist divers — from Thailand, Indonesia, Japan, Australia and France — was headed to Laos on Friday to help with the complex retrieval effort.
