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CHIANG RAI.- Rescue teams gave intensive swimming lessons and dive Wednesday as part of preparations to extract the football team from children captured in a cave from the north Thailand with the desire to end a painful 11-day experience.
A team of divers, doctors, advisers and special forces from the Thai Navy were with the 12 school children and their 25-year-old coach, to whom they delivered medicine and food while the experts assessed the conditions for them. to take off. The government said it would not be easy.
"The water is very strong and the space is narrow, the extraction of children requires a lot of people," Deputy Premier Prawit Wongsuwan told reporters.
"We now teach children to swim and to dive ," he said, adding that if water levels dropped and the current weakened, they could be quickly removed. .
A video posted by Special Forces on Wednesday showed two neoprene rescuers sitting on a high part of the grotto next to children wrapped in emergency aluminum blankets. They seemed to be in a good mood, laughing from time to time. It was not immediately clear when the recording was taken.
A focus points to each child, who greets one by one and presents himself with his head and hands clasped in a traditional Thai "wai" greeting.
A young player in the foreground wears what appears to be the red football jersey that England used in Tuesday's win against Colombia for the World Cup. Another young boy is wearing the blue t-shirt of the English Chelsea.
The boys were found Monday by special forces and two British cave diving experts, after being held incommunicado and in the dark since June 23, when a group outing to the caves it's over in a difficult operational effort. search and rescue.
Efforts to open a line of communication with the boys, located 4 kilometers from the entrance to the cave suffered a setback after the team fell to the water said Chiang Rai governor Narongsak Osottanakorn.
Authorities want to remove children as soon as possible, but they will not do it if it is not safe.
"The 13 do not have to leave at the same time, whoever is ready first can go first," he told reporters. "If there are risks, then we will not extract them."
The goal now is to monitor water levels, precipitation forecasts and extraction procedures. By the end of Tuesday, some 120 million liters of water had been pumped out of the cave.
Reports that boys could be trapped for four months were rejected as speculation by the authorities. However, supplies have been prepared for this period.
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