Good morning and welcome back to the Guardian’s live coverage of the rescue operations to free the boys and their football coach trapped in the Tham Luang caves in northern Thailand.
Overnight, we received the news that four of the boys had been brought out of the cave by divers.
The first two boys emerged from the cave wearing full-face scuba masks just after 5.30pm local time on Sunday, and were embraced by the divers who led them out. Two hours later, another two boys were brought out about 10 minutes apart.
The four received preliminary health checks at the scene and were taken to a hospital in Chiang Rai. One was airlifted and three arrived by ambulance. The boys have not yet been named.
Eight boys and their coach are still trapped in the cave. Narongsak Osatanakorn, the head of the joint command centre coordinating the operation, said yesterday that rescuers needed between 10 and 20 hours to rest and prepare their equipment, for the next stage of the mission, so we are expecting the mission to begin this morning.
As always, feel free to contact me on Twitter or by email: kate.lyons@theguardian.com. You should also follow my brilliant, indefatigable colleagues in the field: Michael Safi, Jacob Goldberg and Veena Thoopkrajae.
We’ll have all the updates on this blog, so keep checking in.
