Rescue teams in central Laos are racing against rising waters and depleting oxygen in a desperate attempt to save seven men trapped deep inside a flooded cave for almost a week. Among the hundred-strong force of rescuers are several of the specialist divers who commanded the world’s attention during the 2018 Tham Luang cave rescue in neighbouring Thailand, lending the operation a grim familiarity for a region accustomed to the lethal whims of the monsoon.

The group of villagers from Xaisomboun province entered the narrow, mineral-rich cave system on 19 or 20 May, defying repeated official warnings, to prospect for gold and hunt wildlife. Torrential rain triggered flash floods and landslides that sealed the entrance, leaving only one man able to scramble out and raise the alarm. The others are believed to be huddled in a pocket of air more than 100 metres from the surface, accessible only by crawling through silt-choked tunnels and submerged passages so tight that rescuers must slither on their bellies.

The response, coordinated from Vientiane with support from Bangkok, has drawn on a multinational ensemble of cave-diving experts, including two Thai nationals and a Finnish diver who helped extract the Wild Boars football team in 2018. Footage released by the rescue teams shows divers negotiating near-zero visibility, ferrying oxygen cylinders through corridors that flood completely during storms. The remote Longchaeng district, once a clandestine Cold War airbase, lies in rugged terrain that complicates logistics, and the monsoon is forecast to intensify in the coming days.

Viewed from the Laotian capital, the drama exposes the perils of informal gold mining in a countryside where state authority is thin and livelihoods depend on risky extraction. Analysts in London note that Laos, a one-party state where information is tightly controlled, has allowed the rescue to become unusually transparent, perhaps because the international divers are themselves documenting the effort. Whether the seven can be saved now hinges on the same delicate calculus of hydrology, geology and time that riveted the world eight years ago—but with fewer safety margins. As water levels continue to rise, officials are racing to pump out water and cut an alternative access route, though no breakthrough is yet in sight.