Indonesia: 3 students found dead inside heavily flooded cave, 5 others rescued

Three university students were found dead after they were trapped inside an Indonesian cave when rain waters flooded it. A search and rescue operation was launched by the Indonesian authorities on December 22, when they retrieved five people alive from the cave. It took an hour for the rescue team to reach the cave, which is 30 metres below the ground level. The incident took place inside the Lele cave in Indonesia's West Java province.

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Indonesia cave rescue

The students reportedly went there as part of a University nature club members and were there to train in basic caving. Initially, only five students were trapped inside the cave but later three more went inside to rescue them, but all of them were trapped. The five students were rescued later by the search team and the three students went inside to rescue them died. Ari Alfian, a senior member of the nature club said that the weather was normal when the students entered the cave but it instantly changed when a heavy downpour hit the area. Notably, the rainy season in Indonesia started in November and several storms in the past two weeks have hit the region. Indonesia is prone to many natural disasters and the most infamous of them being the 2004 earthquake and tsunami.

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A similar cave incident happened in neighbouring Thailand, where a group of twelve members got stuck inside a cave. A junior football team that went to explore a cave went missing on June 23, 2018. The team was stranded in the tunnels by sudden and continuous rainfall after they had entered the Tham Luang Nang Non cave in Chiang Rai province in Thailand. The group was rescued after 18 long days that involved efforts of over 10,000 people, including 100 divers, 900 police officers, 2000 soldiers. A former Thai Navy SEAL officer lost his life while returning to a staging base in the cave after delivering supplies of air.  

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