The search continues for 12 boy and their football coach who have been missing inside a flooded mountain cave in northern Thailand for more than a week.
Divers from a Thai navy SEAL unit were within 500 metres of a chamber containing an elevated rock where they boys might have sought refuge.
The boys, aged 11 to 16, and their 25-year-old coach entered Tham Luang cave in Chiang Rai province on 23 June, when heavy rains flooded key passages of the cave and blocked the way out.
National news has been dominated by updates from the search, which involves more than 1,000 personnel, including rescue teams from Britain, the United States and elsewhere.
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Heavy seasonal rains have hampered the search operation, with divers groping their way along the cave walls, barely able to see in the muddy water, but the pumps had helped to bring down water levels in recent days.
Mr Narongsak said an operations centre has been set up in the third chamber, about a mile from entrance to the cave.
“Yesterday we carried in 200 air cylinders. Today we aim to have 600 air cylinders in the cave, so the team can operate and stay in the cave without coming out,” he said.
Once more personnel are in place, a search will also be made of the right turn at the T-junction, he added.
Progress has been slow as divers need to widen parts of a narrow 100 metre stretch they were unable to pass through without their air cylinders becoming jammed.
“This is today’s aim is to widen this hole,” Chiang Rai’s governor, Narongsak Osatanakorn, told reporters on Monday.
Progress has been slow, as muddy water has risen to fill sections of the cave and forced the divers to withdraw for safety reasons.
When water levels dropped Sunday, they went forward with a more methodical approach, deploying a rope line and extra oxygen supplies along the way.
Doctors have said the boys could survive for days without food, but their survival would depend on whether they found water clean enough to drink.
In addition to the divers, teams have been working to pump out water as well as divert groundwater.
Other efforts have focused on finding shafts on the mountainside which might serve as a back door to the blocked-off areas where the missing may be sheltering.
Teams have been combing the mountainside looking for fissures which might lead to such shafts.
Several have been found and explorers have been able to descend into some, but so far it is not clear whether they lead to anywhere useful.
Additional reporting by agencies
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