Five of the seven villagers initially stranded inside the cave have already been rescued, while multinational teams from Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, Finland, Japan, Indonesia, France and Australia continue efforts to reach the remaining two.

Rescuers are pumping water from the cave and exploring possible dry passages and air shafts that could provide access to the missing individuals, who are believed to be trapped deeper inside the flooded system.

The group reportedly entered the cave in search of valuable minerals before a flash flood sealed their exit, triggering a major international rescue operation.

The men have been trapped for 10 days inside the cave after entering the site to search for valuable minerals before rising floodwaters blocked their exit. Five survivors were located alive on Wednesday, while two members of the group remain unaccounted for.
Rescuers successfully evacuated the first survivor on Friday after a complex operation through submerged and narrow cave passages.

Officials said the remaining four men were not yet ready for extraction and that efforts were continuing to lower water levels and improve conditions for a safe evacuation.

“One person has made it out safely, and we will not stop until the remaining four make it home too,” Thai cave diver Norrased Palasing, who is participating in the operation, said in a social media post on Saturday.
Video footage released by rescuers showed the first survivor emerging from flooded tunnels with assistance from divers before being wrapped in a thermal blanket and moved to safety.

Authorities did not identify which of the five survivors was evacuated.

The trapped villagers have been supplied with water, soft food and emergency blankets, though footage recorded inside the cave indicated their physical condition had deteriorated during the prolonged ordeal.

The rescue operation has drawn specialists from Laos, Thailand, Japan and Malaysia, with Indonesian, French and Australian experts also reported to have joined the effort. Several members of the international team previously participated in the high-profile 2018 rescue of a youth football team trapped in a cave in northern Thailand.

Rescuers face difficult conditions inside the cave system. According to Thai rescue worker Kengkaj Bongkawong, teams must navigate more than 200 meters of narrow, twisting, flooded passages before reaching a submerged tunnel that leads to the trapped men.

The operation is complicated by poor visibility, confined spaces and the challenge of guiding survivors with no diving experience through underwater sections of the cave. Video released by rescuers showed divers instructing the trapped men on the use of breathing equipment and underwater survival techniques ahead of their evacuation.

Search efforts for the two missing villagers are expected to focus on deeper sections of the cave beyond the area where the survivors were found.

Rescue officials said the area is heavily flooded, increasing the risks for divers conducting the search.
The cave is located in the mountainous province of Xaisomboun, approximately 120 kilometers north of the Lao capital, Vientiane.

The suspects were detained at an office building in the Indonesian capital after police investigations linked the group to an online gambling enterprise that had allegedly operated for the past two months, officials said at a press conference.

According to Wira Satya Triputra, director of the Indonesian police force’s crime investigation unit, those arrested included 228 Vietnamese nationals, 57 Chinese citizens, 13 people from Myanmar, 11 from Laos, five from Thailand and three from Cambodia.

Wira said 275 of the detainees were being investigated under Indonesia’s criminal code provisions on gambling, which carry a maximum prison sentence of nine years. He added that most of the suspects were aware they had entered Indonesia to participate in online gambling activities primarily targeting customers outside the country.

Online gambling is prohibited in Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation, where authorities have stepped up enforcement efforts against digital gambling platforms and cross-border criminal syndicates amid concerns over financial fraud and illicit online operations.The arrests marked the second major enforcement operation involving foreign nationals in two days.

On Friday, Indonesian immigration authorities detained 210 foreigners on Batam island in Riau Islands province over allegations they were involved in online investment scams operating from an apartment complex near Singapore.

Interpol Indonesia official Untung Widyatmoko said there had been a recent shift in regional online gambling operations from Cambodian cities into Indonesia, reflecting changing enforcement patterns across Southeast Asia.

The latest raids underscore growing regional concern over organized cybercrime networks that have increasingly used Southeast Asian countries as operational hubs for online gambling, fraud and investment scams targeting international victims.