Four men have been rescued after being trapped in a flooded cave in Laos for 10 days.
Lao and Thai rescue groups have shared footage of the men on stretchers, swaddled in foil blankets while receiving oxygen.
Four of the five men currently found were freed from the complex cave system at about 3.10pm local time on Saturday, the Thailand Rescue Diver Facebook page revealed.
Rescuers said rescue attempts were allowed to proceed after the water had receded to a sufficiently low level to allow the trapped men to join divers to travel to safety.
Yesterday, another man was saved from the cave in a 37-minute-long rescue operation where they pumped out water from the flooded area.
A total of seven Lao nationals embarked on the journey through the narrow tunnels to search for gold more than 10 days ago.
They encountered issues after flash floods in the remote mountain area of the central Xaysomboun province.
The five men were found alive by rescue operations on Wednesday after seven days of searching.
Searches continue for the two other adventurers, who are believed to be trapped within the narrow cave system, with chambers only around 50cm wide.
When the search operation was first launched, rescuers from neighbouring Thailand joined the heroic efforts to recover the seven-strong group.
Rescuers have kept followers updated on the terrifying terrain as they valiantly worked through severe weather conditions, including heavy rain.
The entrance to the cave offers a steep and uneven path for those beginning on the dramatic descent.
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"I’m still shaking. Our team made it happen," one of the rescuers, Bounkham Luanglath of the Lao organisation Rescue Volunteer for People, said when they first discovered the five men.
Previously, rescue teams sounded the alarm that they were in a "race against time" to rescue the villagers on the seventh day of search operations.
Inside the cave, Mikko Paasi, a Finnish diver who also participated in the Thai cave rescue in 2018, said "you have to navigate hundreds of metres of constant restrictions, flood waters, collapse hazards and high risk of contaminated air quality".
To reach the entrance, the villagers would have had to walk 2.5 miles down a steep and rocky terrain.
Rescuers said the missing seven people were "trapped in the terminal chamber" about 300 metres from the exit.
Footage posted on the Facebook page of Lao Phattana News showed rescuers in helmets crawling through tight spaces under torchlight, gasping for breath, and others wading slowly through muddy, chest-high waters deep into the cave.
"As of 4.30pm (9.30GMT), we found five people. We will continue to search for the other two," said Kengkard Bongkawong, the chief of the Thai rescue team.
He added that, while the route was not complicated, the issue was the space.
"The gap is only 50cm wide. It’s really small, so we need to clear out the sediment from this spot first. The gap is quite low to crawl through, and we have to tilt at a 45-degree angle," the expert added.
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