Missing 12 boys and their football team coach are found ALIVE in a cave
NINE DAYS after they went missing in Thailand
Thailand, July 02: All 12 boys and their football team coach have been found alive after becoming trapped in a flooded cave for more than a week in Thailand.
Chang Rai governor Narongsak Osottanakorn told reporters that Thai Navy SEALs had found the group alive after nine days of desperate searching.
He added: 'We found them safe. But the operation isn't over.
'We will bring food to them and a doctor who can dive. I am not sure they can eat as they have not eaten for a while.'
He also said it was expected that in their condition, the boys would at first not be able to move their limbs, but medical teams would initially treat them in place.
An international search effort has gone on since the group went missing inside the Tham Luang cave.
The boys are aged 11 to 16 and are with their 25-year-old coach. They disappeared when flooding trapped them after entering the cave on June 23.
Their team is called the Moo Pa - or Wild Boar.
Narongsak said the passageway the divers were making their way through goes upwards in some places and downwards in others and is extremely narrow, making it difficult for divers to fit through with all their gear.
They were repeatedly blocked by rising water that has filled sections of the cave and forced them to withdraw for safety reasons.
When water levels dropped on Sunday, the divers went forward with a more methodical approach, deploying a rope line and extra oxygen supplies along the way.
Rescue divers spent much of today making preparations for what ended up being the final push in their search in the cave in northern Thailand.
Chiang Rai's governor said the divers had concentrated on securing a rope line and placing oxygen tanks along the narrow passageway that they thought would lead them to the boys.
Thai Navy SEAL divers and rescue workers from other countries made initial progress through the narrow passageway earlier today.
Public anticipation for the rescue has been high since Sunday, but officials avoided setting a timetable for the search and rescue operation.
In addition to the divers, teams have been working to pump out water as well as divert groundwater.
Other efforts have focused on finding shafts on the mountainside that might serve as a back door to the blocked-off areas where the missing may be sheltering.
Teams have been combing the mountainside looking for fissure that might lead to such shafts. Several have been found and explorers have been able to descend into some, but so far it is not clear whether they lead to anywhere useful.
Experts in cave rescues from around the world continued to gather at the site. An official Australian group has now followed a US military team, British cave experts, Chinese lifesaving responders and several other volunteer groups from various countries.
'These are challenging conditions and there's a lot of consideration for safety as well as, the environment outside is contributing to the environment inside,' said US Air Force Capt. Jessica Tait, part of a 30-strong US military team assisting in the search operation, referring to the rain that has been flooding the cave.
'So I'd say, yeah, it's an accurate statement that it's challenging.'
Courtesy: www.dailymail.co.uk
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Two injuries, one DNF, a DQ as India end messy World Relays campaign
Gaborone (Botswana) (PTI): Amoj Jacob and Ragul Kumar got injured during the men's 4x400m and 4x100 races respectively as India ended their World Athletics Relays campaign in disappointment on the second day of competitions here on Sunday.
The Indian camp had high hopes of making the 2027 World Championships in the men's 4x400m relay but the team did not finish (DNF) the race as Jacob suffered cramps and pulled out of the race after taking the baton from the first leg runner Dharamveer Choudhary. Rajesh Ramesh and Vishal TK were to run in the third and fourth legs.
Those teams which could not qualify for the 2027 Beijing World Championships by reaching the final round of each of the six relay events on Saturday were given another chance in the second qualification round on Sunday.
The top two teams in each of the two heats (in all six relay events) booked the Beijing ticket on Sunday.
India will now have to try and qualify for the World Championships through the Top Lists of the World Athletics, which is a long and tedious process.
In the men's 4x100m race, third leg runner Ragul Kumar fell down the track after failing to hand over the baton inside the exchange zone to fourth leg runner Gurindervir Singh, which clearly showed the lack of coordination among the runners.
Harsh Santosh Raut and Animesh Kujur ran the first two legs.
The Indian quartet was disqualified and Kumar was seen being taken away from the Field of Play with the help of the volunteers.
It was a comedy of errors in the case of the women's 4x100m race, which saw the baton being dropped during an exchange between first leg runner Tamanna and second runner Nithya Gandhe, though the Indians finished the race in 53.09 seconds.
Gandhe started running quite a distance, but after realising that the baton was not in her hand, she turned and ran back to pick it up.
The only silver-lining for the Indian contingent was the national record time in the mixed 4x100m relay race, though the quartet of Ragul Kumar, Nithya Gandhe, Animesh Kujur and Sneha SS finished sixth in heat number two with a time of 41.35 seconds, bettering the previous national mark of 42.30 seconds set in March in Chandigarh.
The mixed 4x400m relay quartet of Theerthesh P Shetty, Kumari Saloni, Nihal William and Rashdeep Kaur ended at fifth in heat number one with a time of 3 minutes and 19.40 seconds.
On Saturday, all the five Indian relay teams had failed to make it to the respective final rounds and thus missed out on the 2027 World Championships berths.
