New video footage of the Thai football team trapped deep inside a cave shows the boys laughing and saying they are doing well, 11 day after they went missing.

A video posted on the Facebook page of the Thai navy SEALs on Wednesday depicts the pale, thin boys, many of them wrapped in foil warming blankets, introducing themselves and saying they are “in good health”.

There is laughter at the end of the one-minute video when one of the footballers notes he was skipped in the round of introductions.

Two more videos posted on the Royal Thai Navy Facebook page show divers treating minor wounds and some of the boys smiling while others sleep underneath their blankets.

The 12 boys, aged 11 to 16, and their 25-year-old coach were found on Monday evening, nine days after getting stuck inside the Tham Luang cave complex in northern Thailand’s Chiang Rai province after floods caused by heavy rains blocked its entrance.

Their discovery sparked jubilation across Thailand, but extracting them from the flooded cave could still take weeks if not months.
‘No risk’

On Wednesday, Chiang Rai Governor Narongsak Osatanakorn said that the team has been practicing wearing diving masks and breathing.

He said it was unlikely an extraction would be attempted on Wednesday.

“We have to be 100 percent confident that there is no risk to the boys before we evacuate,” Narongsak told reporters.

“We will take care of them like they are our own children.”

Narongsak said that the team may be taken out in stages depending on their health. He also said that food, medicine and relief gear was being taken into the cave, but that installation of a phone line had failed on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, navy SEALs were trying again to run a fiber optic internet line which would enable phone calls to the ledge where the football team is waiting for rescue.

Authorities also continued to pump water round the clock in hopes of bringing water levels down in the cave. Fresh monsoon rains which have been forecasted could add a further complication to an already tricky rescue operation.

[SOURCE: Al Jazeera and news agencies]