Rescuers

June 1 (UPI) — Rescue workers in Laos said they heard a knocking sound while searching flooded caves for villagers who went missing on May 19.

The search continues in the Xaisomboun province for two of seven villagers who descended into the caves searching for gold last month. The rescue workers said Monday they knocked on the cave walls and heard a “knocking response” from deep inside the cave system within the last 24 hours.

An eighth villager went into the cave with the group but was able to escape and alert of the seven others who were trapped.

“Yesterday, when we knocked, there was a signal responding back,” Kengkaj Bongkawong, head of Metta Tham Rescue Kalasin, a Thai rescue team, wrote on Facebook. “It was a knocking sound meant to be heard. Based on our initial assessment, this is considered not to be a reflection or an echo of the sound.”

The sound was discovered after the rescue team rappelled down a vertical shaft they had discovered. They report hearing a knocking response twice in the last 24 hours.

Flash flooding after the villagers went into the cave caused them to be trapped. Five of the villagers were rescued last week when a rescue team pumped water out of the cave to help them get out.

One of the villagers was trained to scuba dive and was able to swim out of the cave.

“Moving forward, it won’t just be a matter of sitting around waiting for water to be pumped out,” Bongkawong wrote.

Rescuers face heavy rains, equipment failures in search for two people trapped in central Laos cave by flash floods.

Heavy rains have threatened to delay the search for two people who remain missing in a flooded cave in Laos, after five others were rescued after being trapped underground for more than a week.

Finnish diver Mikko Paasi, one of the first international rescuers to arrive at the site, told The Associated Press news agency that rains on Sunday had filled the cave up to the second chamber, preventing divers from entering until pumps can lower the water level.

A drainage pump also broke, making the situation even more difficult, said fellow diver Yoshitaka Isaji of Japan.

Rescue teams from Laos and neighbouring Thailand have been working together over the past week to rescue the trapped villagers, alongside divers from countries including Finland, Malaysia, Japan, Indonesia, France and Australia.

Seven people entered the cave in a remote mountainous area of central Xaysomboun province last week to look for valuable minerals such as gold, before being trapped by a flash flood that blocked their way out, according to local media reports.

One other person escaped and alerted the authorities.

A Laotian rescue group said on Sunday it had received “substantial” information on the cave system from the five men who were rescued earlier this week. “The hope is that today’s mission will locate both remaining victims,” the group wrote on social media.

The rescued men were being treated at a local hospital and were doing well, Malaysian diver Lee Kian Lie, who is taking part in the operation, told AP.

“We interviewed them about how the deeper part of the cave looks like. We will continue to search based on the information we have, and perhaps we will be able to get to the other two,” he said.

Rescuers said they navigated more than 200m (650 feet) into the cave and discovered five chambers in the system. The five people rescued so far were found in the fifth chamber.

Paasi, the Finnish diver, told AP that the survivors reported a narrow crack in the fifth chamber that could be a passage leading to a deeper part of the cave system.

“This was the only place that we haven’t checked in the mine, where the two lost miners could still be,” he said in a video interview.

The five men who were rescued – identified by their first names as Khamla, Mued, Ee, Ing and Laen – were first found last Wednesday.

The first man was safely extracted on Friday, guided through a narrow flooded passage by an expert diver. The remaining four left the cave on Saturday, after the water receded enough for them to walk out on their own, rescuers said.

Videos posted online on Saturday showed emotional moments as the men emerged one by one from the cave. Some collapsed on the ground at the cave’s entrance, and were hugged by a group of workers who cried with joy.

Later moments showed them lying on stretchers, wrapped in foil blankets and fitted with oxygen masks before being transported out.

Five of seven men who entered cave seeking gold are now out after being trapped for 10 days.

Rescuers have pulled four more men from a flooded cave in central Laos, bringing to five the number freed from a group of villagers who became trapped while searching for gold. Two others remain missing.

The four were brought out on Saturday, a day after the first man was rescued, ending a period of about 10 days during which the group was cut off underground.

The Thailand Rescue Diver Facebook page said that “rescue officials were able to bring out four more people trapped” at about 3:10pm (08:10 GMT).

Rescuers said the water inside the cave had finally dropped low enough for the men to walk and swim out alongside the divers who had reached them.

The operation has drawn diving teams from several countries, but the danger is far from over, with two members of the group still unaccounted for deep inside the flooded passages.

Lao and Thai rescue groups posted images of the men being carried out on stretchers, caked in mud, wearing oxygen masks and wrapped in foil blankets.

Footage shared online showed some of them collapsing as they emerged, before being embraced by rescuers.

The five had been located alive on Wednesday, huddled on a rocky ledge in a chamber about 300 metres (980 feet) from the entrance. Unable to bring them out straight away, rescuers passed in water, soft food and blankets to keep them going.

“The first one is out. Safe and sound!!!” Manat Artmongkron, a technician with a Thai rescue group, wrote on Facebook after the first evacuation on Friday.

Divers described treacherous conditions in the narrow, flooded tunnels, where visibility was almost nil. One stretch was a 25-metre passage too tight to turn around in.

The group had entered the cave around May 19 or 20, to look for gold and other minerals, according to local officials, before heavy rain triggered flash flooding that sealed off their way out.

An eighth villager who escaped in time alerted the authorities to those left behind.

Rescue teams said they were now preparing to push deeper into the cave – about 20 to 25 metres beyond where the survivors were found – to look for the two missing men, though that section remained heavily flooded.

Local officials said residents of the remote, mountainous province of Xaisomboun often forage for a living and enter such caves in search of gold, despite repeated warnings about the risks.