A newly released video by Thailand’s Navy SEALs offered a glimpse into the harrowing weekslong effort to rescue 12 Thai boys and their soccer coach that came to an end on Tuesday.
The seven-minute long video posted to Facebook on Wednesday shows workers wearing scuba gear and headlamps carefully traversing the rocky cave’s pitch black confines to reach the soccer team members who became trapped by heavy rain on June 23.
When the rescuers emerge, they can be seen carrying stretchers that appear to be supporting the boys who are wrapped in metallic space blankets.
The boys, between 11 and 16, and their 25-year-old coach had been on a team trek when they were trapped in the Tham Luang Cave after rain began filling the entrance. Unable to get back out, they found refuge in a small chamber roughly 2.5 miles from the entrance.
After days of searching, the boys were found by scuba divers who eventually began evacuating the team members out of the cave, one at a time.
That dramatic rescue operation, which reportedly may become a movie, cost one Navy SEAL, Saman Gunan, his life after he perished while placing oxygen tanks inside the cave.