Thai military mulls rescue options
Agonizing evacuation ahead for Thai youth soccer team
Rescuers braced for a long and difficult evacuation for 13 members of a Thai youth soccer team found alive in a cave nine days after they went missing, as food and medicine was shuttled to them through muddy waters on Tuesday.
The 12 young boys and their soccer coach were discovered rake thin and hungry on a mound of mud surrounded by water late Monday, ending the agonizing search that captivated a nation.
But the focus quickly shifted to the tricky task of how to evacuate them safely from the stillflooded caverns.
Much-needed food and medical supplies – including highcalorie gels and paracetamol – reached them Tuesday as rescuers prepared for a prolonged extraction operation.
The Thai military said advanced preparations were underway to help them out of the waterlogged Tham Luang cave network in Thailand’s mountainous north.
“(We will) prepare to send additional food to be sustained for at least four months and train all 13 to dive while continuing to drain the water,” Navy Captain Anand Surawan said.
He refused to speculate how long they might be trapped, but experts said it could take weeks or even months.
The timeline is key given the region’s incessant monsoon rains.
In a Facebook post on Tuesday afternoon the Thai Navy SEAL team said they were using a cave chamber as an “operations center” to meticulously plan the evacuation alongside foreign expert divers who have been instrumental to the rescue bid.
As the first footage of the kids spread across social media, jubilation erupted across a country which has been glued to each twist of the massive rescue operation.
“We called this ‘mission impossible’ because it rained every day... but with our determination and equipment we fought nature,” Chiang Rai governor Narongsak Osottanakorn said Tuesday.
The boys were discovered at about 10:00 pm (1500 GMT) Monday by British divers some 400 meters from where they were believed to be stranded several kilometers inside the cave.