Overview
- Rescue teams found five of seven people alive deep inside an abandoned gold‑prospecting cave and pulled the first of those five to safety late on Friday after a complex extraction through tight passages.
- Divers located the survivors huddled on a rock roughly 300 metres into the cave and supplied them with water, soft food and blankets while they prepared evacuations.
- Teams are draining water from long submerged stretches and rehearsing staged removals because some passages are as narrow as about 23 inches and include a roughly 27‑metre underwater section that makes full‑gear diving hazardous.
- Rescuers face low oxygen and toxic hydrogen sulfide gas in parts of the cave, have paused operations overnight for assessment, and say they urgently need oxygen bottles and an on‑site refill capability to continue safely.
- Two people remain missing and searches will resume, while the multinational rescue effort — including volunteers who worked on the 2018 Thai cave mission — underscores local economic pressures that drove villagers to prospect in a known hazardous mine.