ALL 12 BOYS, COACH RESCUED FROM CAVE

■ Divers use treacherous escape route from Thai cave

Mae Sai ( Thailand), July 10: The final five members of a young football team were rescued from a flooded Thai cave on Tuesday after spending 18 harrowing days trapped deep inside, completing an astonishing against- theodds rescue mission that captivated the world.

Elite foreign divers and Thai Navy SEALs extracted the final batch of four boys, plus the 25- year- old coach, on Tuesday afternoon via a treacherous escape route that required them to squeeze through narrow, water- filled tunnels. “All 12 ‘ Wild Boars’ and coach have been extracted from the cave,” the SEALs said in a Facebook post, referring to the boys by the name of their football team.

“All are safe,” they added, signing off with what has become their trademark “Hooyah” that they used to celebrate the successful extractions of the other eight boys over the previous two days. With oxygen levels in their chamber falling to dangerous levels and monsoon rains threatening to flood the cave above the ledge where

the boys were sheltering, rescuers decided on the least- worst option of having divers escort them out through the tunnels.

Meanwhile, a foreign diver involved in the mission to save 12 boys and their football coach from a flooded Thai cave has hailed the children as “incredibly strong”, and described their treacherous escape journey as unprecedented.

“They are getting forced to do something that no kid has ever done before. It is not in any way normal for kids to go cave diving at age 11,” Ivan Karadzic, who runs a diving business in Thailand, told the BBC in an interview that was published online on Tuesday. – Agencies