Elon Musk offers help as rescue effort ramps up to extract trapped boys inside Thailand cave
The muddy bank where the boys are stranded is some 4 km (2.5 miles) from the front entrance of the cave, with sections of the final 1.7-km stretch completely underwater.
Rescue teams thrashed through dense forest hundreds of metres above a cave complex on Friday, searching for an alternative way to extract 12 boys and their soccer coach trapped inside for nearly two weeks. Their work above the Tham Luang cave near Thailand’s northern border with Myanmar took on added urgency as forecasts for rain threatened a plan to bring the boys back through cramped, water-logged passageways to the cave entrance.
“We want to find the way down. I believe we are close,” Thanes Weerasiri, president of the Engineering Institute of Thailand, told Reuters at a makeshift camp for volunteers and media near the cave.
The Thai government said Musk’s team could help the rescue operation with location tracking, water pumping or battery power. Relatives of the boys, some of whom have camped at the site for weeks, say all they want is the safest exit for their children. “I’m worried…he has never dived,” said Somboon Kaewwongwan, the father of a 16-year-old boy trapped in the cave.
