Four additional men were rescued from the semi-submerged cave in Laos where they had been trapped for ten days, rescuers announced, after a first person was rescued on Friday, two others still missing. “Four victims have been extracted,” Lee Kian Lie, a Malaysian rescue diver, told AFP via Messenger.
“The water level was lowered by pumping,” he explained, “which allowed them to get out.” The Thailand Rescue Diver Facebook page said rescue officials were able to “extract four more trapped people” around 3:10 p.m. (10:10 a.m. in Switzerland) on Saturday. “A total of five people have now been rescued, while two remain missing.”
Seven men had been trapped in a cave in a remote mountainous area of the central Xaysomboun province since May 20, when flash floods left them isolated while searching for gold, according to state media. Five of the men were located alive on Wednesday, grouped in a narrow passage about 300 meters from the entrance to the cave.
On Friday, rescuers were able to extract a man, haggard and covered in mud. The other two members of the group remain missing.
