Five people found alive after week trapped in flooded Laos cave

Rescuers in Laos have found five villagers alive inside a flooded cave after they were trapped for a week following heavy rain and landslides.

Two other villagers who were with them are missing, Lao and Thai rescue teams involved in the operation said.

The seven were part of a group of villagers from the central province of Xaysomboun who had gone into the cave on Wednesday last week in search of gold deposits and wildlife, but could not get out as the cave's entrance was blocked.

Footage shared by the rescuers showed cave divers crawling through narrow, muddy passageways that were almost completely flooded.

Bounkham Luanglath of the Lao organisation Rescue Volunteer for People told the Associated Press the search for the missing would continue.

"I'm still shaking," he said in a voice message. "Our team made it happen."

The cave system, which extends deep underground, is also extremely narrow, with some chambers measuring only about 50cm (20in) wide, rescuers say.

"We've found five people alive and all safe," Laotian rescue group Rescue Volunteer for People said in a social media post.

"There are still two people we are searching for."

Thai rescuer Kengkach Bangkawong said on Facebook that the villagers had been found at 16:30 local time (09:30 GMT).

Specialist rescue diver Mikko Paasi from Finland said earlier on Wednesday that rescuers needed to "navigate hundreds of metres of constant restrictions, flood waters, collapse hazards and high risk of contaminated air quality" inside the cave, which he called an "abandoned gold mine".

He estimated the seven people were trapped around 300m (984ft) from the exit.

The villagers entered the cave, about 120km (75 miles) north of the capital Vientiane, last Wednesday, state media said.

"The area is not owned by anybody," Laotian rescuer Baeng, who requested one name be used for security reasons, told AFP news agency. "Locals usually go there to dig holes and look for food."

Kengkach was part of the team that helped bring 12 young Thai boys and their football coach to safety after they were trapped for two weeks inside a flooded cave underneath a mountain in Thailand's Chiang Rai province in 2018.

The extraordinary rescue involved more than 10,000 experts from around the world and drew intense global attention.

Several films and documentaries have been made based on it, including the feature film Thirteen Lives and the documentary The Rescue.