Thailand soccer team

Updated July 10, 2018 @ 9:24 a.m.

All 12 members of a Thailand soccer team and their coach have been rescued from the flooded Tham Luang cave in Khun Nam Nang National Park in northern Thailand.

Expert divers pulled the last 4 boys and their 25-year-old coach out of the cave late Monday (Tuesday East Coast time). The rescue operation took more than 2 weeks and involved over 100 cave divers, electricians and engineers.

Nineteen divers accompanied the last group out of the cave after they were trapped by rising water on June 23.

The team and their coach will be quarantined for a week due to high risk for infection. When they are released from a hospital, they will be banned from the Internet and social media to protect them psychologically.

The 12 soccer team members, ages 11 to 16, and their coach were trapped after they explored the cave in Chiang Rai, Thailand, as part of an initiation ritual after soccer practice. The boys ran about 2 miles into the cave and scrawled their names on a wall.

But torrential rain from a monsoon quickly flooded the entrance to the cave, blocking their escape and forcing them deeper into the cave in search of higher ground.

The boys’ bicycles were spotted by a park employee after the park closed for the evening on June 23. The employee alerted the authorities who launched a massive search for the missing group.

At least one of the boys was able to communicate with the rescuers in English and translate for the other boys. Nearly 200 primary and secondary schools in Thailand offer students the opportunity to learn multiple languages.