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The search for 12 teenage football (soccer) players and their coach believed to be trapped in a flooded cave complex in Thailand resumed for a fourth day Tuesday.
As a team of elite Navy divers re-entered the Tham Luang caves in the northern province of Chaing Rai, the boys's anxious parents gathered outside the entrance and offered desperate prayers for the children's safe return.

The boys and their coach were reported missing Saturday, when they did not return from practice. The search began when their bicycles and soccer cleats were found outside the entrance of the complex. Search officials believe the team has taken shelter inside a large chamber deep inside the complex.

Rescuers led by a team of elite navy divers pumped water out of a partially flooded cave in northern Thailand on Tuesday in a bid to rescue 12 members of a boys’ soccer team and their coach who went missing four days earlier.

Battling darkness, poor ventilation and muddy waters that rose to almost 23 feet following heavy rains over the weekend, the rescuers were racing to create breathing space for divers to venture deeper into the labyrinthine cave complex in a search that has riveted the country.

CHIANG RAI, Thailand — Thai rescue workers will drill a narrow shaft into a cave where 12 schoolboys and their soccer coach are believed to be trapped by flood waters, Thailand’s interior minister said on Wednesday, the fourth day of a search that has been hampered by heavy rain.
Thai volunteers and military teams, including 45 navy SEAL unit members, have been deployed at the flooded cave complex, which runs 10 km (6 miles) under a mountain in the northern province of Chiang Rai.

Apart from some footprints and marks left by their muddy hands near the cave entrance, nothing has been seen or heard of them since Saturday evening, and the race to find them has dominated Thai news.

“I’m confident all are still alive,” Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha told reporters.

“Massive Amounts” of Water

Vern Unsworth, a British cave explorer based in Chiang Rai who has joined the search, said a lot of water was seeping into the cave from two directions.

“There is a watershed inside, which is unusual. It means there is water coming in from two directions,” Unsworth told Reuters. “The biggest challenge is the water. Massive amounts.”

Three divers coming from Britain were expected to reach Thailand on Wednesday evening to join the search, the interior minister said.

The US military has sent a search and rescue team at the request of the Thai government, Lieutenant Commander Nicole Schwegman, a spokeswoman for the US Indo-Pacific Command, told Reuters.

Thailand has asked the United States for survivor detection equipment, Tourism Minister Weerasak Kowsurat said.