MAE SAI, Thailand — Four more Thai soccer team players were removed from a flooded cave Monday during the second day of painstaking rescue missions through the murky underground waters.
Now only four players and their coach remain in the cavern complex, where they became trapped more than two weeks ago. The first four boys were taken out of the cave by divers on Sunday.
The day’s efforts lasted nine hours, according Thailand’s Navy SEAL unit.
‘‘2 days, 8 Wild Boars,’’ the unit said in a Facebook post, referring to the name of the soccer team.
Those rescued Monday were brought by helicopter to a hospital in Chiang Rai to join the four others taken out the previous day. There was no immediate word on their conditions.
Mission chief Narongsak Osatanakorn, the former governor of Chiang Rai province, said that rescuers were hoping to move as fast as possible before rains returned.
A final push for the remaining five trapped in the cave was expected Tuesday after the exit route was restocked with air tanks, ropes, and other supplies, but officials said the rescue mission could extend into a fourth day.
The 12 boys and their 25-year-old coach disappeared after they went into the caves on June 23 and were trapped by rising waters. They were found more than a week later, stuck on a small muddy patch deep in the cave’s network of chambers.
To get the boys through the miles of submerged passages, they were each tethered to a diver, with another positioned behind him, as they made their way through the dark waters that have filled the cave’s passageways.
Each boy was fitted with a face mask connected to a compressed air tank. At especially narrow parts of the cave, the tanks had to be rolled through.
Workers have been pumping water out of the cave around the clock, and authorities said Monday that heavy downpours did not raise water levels inside.
Officials said the boys are healthy and in good spirits but have not provided details on their condition. Keeping them isolated will allow doctors to ensure they do not have any infections, they said.
After their first night in the hospital, the boys rescued Sunday requested a Thai dish of spicy basil pork, the officials added.
Authorities have declined to provide the names and identities of the boys who were rescued. Friends of 13-year-old Mongkol Boonpiem, however, said he was among those who were extracted Sunday. He was reported to be among the weakest in the group.
Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha spoke Monday with the boys’ family members, many of whom have been camped out at the cave rescue site since the team went missing.
Workers were seen lining the roads around Chiang Rai airport, the closest regional airport to the site of the cave, with flags representing the Thai king.
Locals in Mae Sai and across the country have closely watching every twist and turn of the dramatic search on television.
Nuttachoong Pimtong, a 14-year-old friend of Adul Sam-on, said he was watching a Thai television network on Monday with his family when he saw the first footage of the boys being taken away from the cave site in ambulances.
‘‘We all clapped and cheered,’’ he said.
