The leader of a Thai volunteer group who are trying to help seven people in a cave in Laos, said they will need oxygen tanks to complete the rescue.
According to the state-run Lao Phattha News, seven Lao nationals entered the cave in central Laos's Xaisomboun province last week aiming to look for gold when a landslide trapped them in the cave.
Reports state that atleast five people have been found alive, however they have not been able to rescue them.
"We need to borrow as many oxygen tanks as possible and want to set up an oxygen refilling station in front of the cave," Kengkard Bongkawong, head of operations for Metta Tham Rescue, a Thai rescue group, wrote on social media.
Thai volunteers offered their help on Sunday to the rescue mission. One of them being Mikko Paasi, a diver, who has experience in this situation as he took part in the 2018 rescue of 12 boys and their football coach from a flooded cave in northern Thailand.
After the volunteers found the five people who are trapped in the cave, Bongkawong wrote to social media: “The job is not over yet. The next step is to find a way to mobilise the five people out of the cave. This isn’t easy."
According to reports, the rescue team had to climb through tunnels that are just 60cm wide for hundreds of metres and move through long stretches of dark, flooded areas inside the cave, before they found the chamber the people are trapped in.
“The environment is extremely remote and hostile that starts with four-kilometre jungle track to the site and when inside the mine you have to navigate hundreds of metres of constant restrictions, flood waters, collapse hazards and high risk of contaminated air quality,” Paasi wrote in a post on social media.
