After more than two weeks trapped inside a cave complex in Thailand, all 12 boys and their football coach have finally been rescued.
The last three members of the youth football team and their coach were pulled out of the cave on Tuesday.
“All 12 wild boars and the coach have left the cave. all safe. Now waiting to receive 4 divers to come out. Hooyah,” the Thai navy SEALs said in a post on Facebook.
A crack team of foreign divers and Thai Navy SEALS has been guiding the boys out through nearly 4 km (2.5 miles) of sometimes submerged, pitch-dark channels.
The boys were exploring the caves on June 23 with their coach when they were trapped inside by heavy seasonal rains.
After they were found on July 2, officials cautioned it could take some time to get them out, but with heavy rain forecast to hit the region authorities decided to act.
How the boys were rescued
The miraculous mission was a battle against time and heavy rainfall prediction for the week, which was likely to flood tunnels once again, making the entire operation difficult to carry out.
The eight boys brought out on Sunday and Monday were in good health overall and some asked for chocolate bread for breakfast, officials said.
Two of the boys had suspected lung infections but the four boys from the first group rescued were all walking around their hospital beds.
They are still being quarantined from their parents because of the risk of infection and would likely be kept in hospital for a week to undergo tests, officials said.
Four more of the boys were carried on stretchers out of the labyrinthine Tham Luang cave on the Myanmar border at dusk on Monday, bringing to eight the number brought out after two rescue pushes on successive days.
People across Thailand, and the world, have cheered the rescue operation.
Technology billionaire Elon Musk visited the cave and offered up a specially built kid-sized submarine which the team turned down as it was ‘not practical’.
