BANGKOK — With their elbows and knees scraping the walls as they wriggle through claustrophobic tunnels, rescuers are in a race against time to save two men still stuck in a cave in central Laos.Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.Seven men in search of gold were trapped in the mazelike cave network in Xaisomboun province more than a week ago when heavy rain and flash flooding blocked the only entrance.Five of them have since been freed as water levels dropped, including four who walked out on their own on Saturday just as divers were getting ready to go in and get them.On Monday, the focus narrowed on the remaining two men, as divers used ropes to rappel down into deep shafts, straining to hear clues for where they might be.Kengkard Bongkawong, a Thai specialist cave diver whose Mettatham Association Rescue Unit is leading the high-stakes operation, said they were not giving up on their search, though he admitted he was feeling the pressure with lives on the line.
“The discouraged and tired feelings are a lot, I still feel I am failing in many things,” he told NBC News as he teared up while speaking from the site in an interview Monday.01:20Four more men rescued from Laos cave00:0000:00“To be the operator and to be the leader, the pressure is so different,” said Bongkawong, who was also a key part of the team involved in the 2018 rescue of a dozen boys and their soccer coach from a cave in Thailand’s Chiang Rai province.
He said his team had been in and out of the Laos cave at least three times a day as the first five men were rescued.“I think we did it, we made it and for the rest, we will try to do our best,” he said.The high-tech rescue operation has unfolded as a multinational effort, with specialist divers also deployed from France, Australia, Finland, Malaysia, Japan and Indonesia.It relies on advanced terrain mapping technologies such as LiDAR, simultaneous cave drainage, ...