World

Heavy rain to delay search for two missing in Laos cave

May 31, 2026

Heavy rain is threatening to delay the search for two people still missing in a flooded cave in Laos after the rescue of five other people who were trapped underground for over a week.

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Finnish diver Mikko Paasi, one of the first international rescuers to arrive at the site, told The Associated Press that rains had filled the cave up to the second chamber, preventing divers from entering until pumps can lower the water level.

The seven villagers reportedly entered the cave last week to look for valuable minerals before being trapped by a flash flood that blocked their way out. One other villager escaped and alerted the authorities.

Rescue teams from Laos and neighbouring Thailand have been working together in the past week at the site in a rugged area in the central province of Xaisomboun, about 120 kilometres north of the capital, Vientiane.Â

They were joined by divers from countries including Finland, Malaysia, Japan, Indonesia, France and Australian Josh Richards.

Several of the rescuers previously took part in the complicated 2018 cave rescue in northern Thailand that saved 12 schoolboys and their soccer coach from a flooded cave.

The rescued men are being treated at a local hospital and are doing well, Malaysian diver Lee Kian Lie, who's taking part in the operation, told the AP on Sunday.

"We interviewed them about how the deeper part of the cave looks like. We will continue to search based on the information we have, and perhaps we will be able to get to the other two," he said.

According to rescuers, they have navigated more than 200 meters into the cave and discovered five chambers in the system. The five people rescued so far were found in the fifth chamber.

Paasi told the AP that the survivors said there's a narrow crack in the fifth chamber that could be a passage leading to a deeper part of the cave system.

"This was the only place that we haven't checked in the mine, where the two lost miners could still be," he said during a video interview.

"Now there's a theory that, through that small crack, it still continues, and there's a sixth chamber, which gives us hope now that, if we could penetrate that small restriction, we might be able to reach the sixth chamber and then see what is there."