Rescue teams in central Laos were working against the threat of fresh heavy rain to reach two gold miners still missing in a flooded cave, after five others trapped underground since the middle of May were brought out alive. Officials warned that the search might have to be paused for the safety of the rescuers if conditions worsened.
The men had ventured into the cave system in mountainous Xaysomboun province in search of gold deposits when a torrential downpour triggered flash flooding that sealed their exit. Seven were caught in the tunnels in all, and the days that followed turned into a tense international rescue effort as water levels rose and fell.
The first survivor was pulled out after nine days underground, removed late one evening by divers who had threaded through the flooded passages. The following day, after waters receded, four more men were able to walk and crawl out of the cave on their own, in scenes that rescuers described as deeply emotional.
The operation has drawn a multinational team of experienced cave divers, among them veterans of the 2018 rescue of a youth football team from the Tham Luang cave in neighbouring Thailand, an episode that gripped the world and demonstrated both the dangers and the possibilities of such missions.
For the two families still waiting, the renewed rain has been agonising. Heavy precipitation raises water levels in the cave and the risk to divers, and authorities have made clear that they will not send rescuers into conditions deemed too dangerous, even as hope of finding the men alive narrows.
The episode has cast light on the perilous, often informal gold mining that draws people into unstable terrain in parts of Laos, where the lure of a find can outweigh the hazards of working underground in a region prone to sudden, violent flooding.