Thai cave rescue: How the football team were found after 9 gruelling days

After nine days trapped in a flooded Thai cave, 12 boys and their football coach have been found alive in a miraculous rescue. Rescuers battled intensifying rain to furiously pump water from a cave in Thailand on Tuesday, as officials thrashed out plans to extract a young soccer team located by divers after being trapped and incommunicado for days.

Aged between 11 and 16, the boys and their 25-year-old coach went missing on June 23, after they set out to explore the caves in a forest park following a training session.

Rear Admiral Apakorn Yuukongkaew, commander of the SEALS unit, said rain was still a challenge but the boys would be taken out safely as soon as sufficient water could be pumped out of the cave.

The 13 have been given a gel with high calorie and mineral content to sustain them while rescue plans are worked out.

Officials declined to say what plans ‘A’ and ‘B’ were, but said they aimed to bring the boys out the same way they had entered.

Options included teaching the group to use smaller diving apparatus and guiding them out of the caves, from which 120 million litres of water had been pumped continuously for 75 hours by Tuesday evening.

Here's how the gruelling nine-day search in the 10km-long cave filled with fast-flowing muddy flood waters unfolded.

The boys along with their coach go into the Tham Luang cave in northern Thailand after football practice. They are reported missing by a mother after her young son fails to come home that night.

Local officials start to look for the boys after they are believed to have become trapped by heavy rain that cuts them off from the main entrance.

They find bicycles locked to a fence and shoes and football boots belonging to the children close to the entrance.

Park officials and police kick into gear to look for the boys, and heavy rain continues to fall in the area near the Laos and Myanmar borders.

They find handprints and footprints believed to belong to the boys and think they have likely retreated into the winding tunnels as they became hemmed in by rising flood waters.

Thai Navy Seal divers are in the cave searching for the boys, carrying oxygen tanks and food.

Makeshift shrines are set up for parents to pray and make offerings.

Heavy rain continues, sparking fears that flood waters within the cave could rise.

The boys are believed to have retreated farther into the cave to an elevated air pocket called "Pattaya Beach".

Divers reach a T-junction several kilometres inside the cave but are forced back by rushing flood waters that clog a narrow crevice near Pattaya Beach.

Rescue operations run around the clock but it is a race against time as rain continues to fall.

Thailand's junta leader Prayut Chan-o-cha calls for the nation to support the rescue.

A team of more than 30 American military personnel from the US Pacific Command, including pararescue and survival specialists, arrive at the site late Wednesday.

They are joined by three British diving experts who go into the cave's entrance but quickly retreat because of heavy flooding.

Continuing rain causes flood levels to rise, and officials say conditions are "difficult".

The underwater rescue is temporarily halted because of the fast-moving floods inside the cave as downpours refuse to let up.

Water pumps are shipped in to drain the rising flood waters that are so murky it is likened to swimming through cold coffee.

American experts get to work around the base, while the three British divers and others scour the mountain for alternative entrances into the cave.

Drones are dispatched to help look for new chimneys.

A glimmer of hope as rescue teams find a possible opening, but there is no guarantee it will connect to the main cave network.

Prayut Chan-o-cha visits the site, leads a meditation, and jokes and cooks with relatives, asking them not to give up hope.

A break in the bad weather allows divers to reach farther inside the cave but they are still several kilometres from where the boys are believed to be.

Teams continue to search for alternative openings above ground and rescuers conduct practice drills to safely evacuate the boys if and when they are found.

Divers inch farther into the cave, taking advantage of the brief break in bad weather.

Rescuers set up an operating base inside the cave, and hundreds of oxygen tanks and other supplies are pulleyed in. Divers can now remain underground for longer.

As the sun breaks out, Chiang Rai Governor Narongsak Osottanakorne says conditions for the operation are improving.

A miracle, finally: The 12 boys and their coach are found alive and safe about 400m farther along from Pattaya Beach, which has become threatened by encroaching flood waters.

Crowds at the teeming rescue site cheer the good news and a nation breathes a sigh of relief.

But attention now turns to the difficult task of getting the boys out safely.

The main priority is to get them food and first aid after nine days with little to eat in difficult conditions.

It could take days - or weeks - to get them out. Rescuers explore several options, including training them to use scuba equipment.