Mae Sai(Thailand): A new video of a youth football team trapped in the bowels of a Thai cave emerged on Wednesday showing the boys laughing and saying they are well after their astonishing discovery by divers nine days after going missing.
In a heartening message to families waiting in anguish outside, the Thai Navy SEAL footage features 11 of the 12-strong team, each makes a traditional Thai greeting gesture to the camera before introducing themselves by nickname and saying “I’m in good health”.
Several of the boys in the frame are wearing protective foil blankets and are accompanied by a smiling diver in a wetsuit. Their 25-year-old coach, who accompanied the boys down the cave after football training on June 23, is not heard in the footage, published on the Thai Navy Facebook page.
It is the second video to delight a Thai nation that has held its breath for a successful outcome to a complex rescue kilometres inside one of the country’s longest caves.
The one-minute clip ends on a jovial note, with one of the 12 footballers saying he was forgotten in the round of introductions, sparking laughter. The boys appear relaxed and alert than when they were when discovered late on Monday by British divers, as they took shelter from surging underground waters on a muddy ledge.
Outside the cave one of the boy’s mothers teared-up as she watched the clip on a TV screen, saying she was “glad” for a glimpse her son. “He is thinner” she said.
