Rescuers suspend search for 2 miners believed trapped in flooded cave in Laos
International rescuers have indefinitely suspended the search for two gold miners believed trapped in a cave in Laos, nearly three weeks after they were reported missing with five others who were rescued, officials said.
International dive teams that converged on the country's Xaisomboun province, where monsoon flood waters trapped the miners last month, were heading back home on Sunday, a search coordinator told ABC News.
The cave system, according to the coordinator, has become too unstable to safely carry on with the search. The rescue coordinator said the hope of finding the two remaining miners is now very low.
While water in the flooded subterranean labyrinth has been pumped out and lowered to a manageable level, the coordinator said the entrance to the cave has become too unstable for rescuers to safely proceed with the operation.
A local rescue team will keep pumping water from the cave in hopes of a miracle, the coordinator said.
The operation was halted after rescuers explored a newly discovered 196-foot-deep shaft they had hoped would lead them to a chamber where they suspected the two miners might be. But no sign of the miners was reported.
A group of seven illegal gold miners entered the cave on May 19 and became trapped when monsoon rains flooded the cave's entrance, rescuers said.
The rescue team was able to pump enough water out of the system for four miners to crawl out of the muddy abyss on May 30, authorities said. A day earlier, a fifth miner was able to crawl and swim out of the cave after he was taught how to scuba dive, rescuers said.
In an interview with ABC News last week, Josh Richards, an Australian diver who was part of the rescue operation, said the two remaining missing miners could be in a sixth chamber, past the one where the five other miners were located.
But Richards said some of the rescued miners told officials that there were only six of them trapped in the cave, including one who managed to extract himself at the outset of the emergency and alert authorities.
Richards said that one possible theory is that eight miners entered the cave and three got out on their own and went into hiding because their mining activities are illegal in Laos and subject to prosecution.
