Eight years after their historic rescue of a boys’ soccer team trapped in a flooded cave in northern Thailand, several of the same Thai divers are once again risking their lives—this time to rescue a group of miners trapped by floodwaters in a cave in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic.

Similar to the successful effort that saved the 13 boys of the Wild Boars youth soccer team and their coach in 2018, the Thai divers joined an international team of volunteers. They converged on a cave in Xaisomboun Province, Laos, where monsoon floodwaters trapped seven miners in late May.

Thai cave diver Chakkit Taengtang posted video of himself inside a subterranean passageway, saying divers were delivering food and water to the five miners they had located and were planning to extract them as soon as possible.

Videos shared by other Thai rescuers showed that reaching the cave entrance required a steep hike of about 2.5 miles. The entrance was barely wide enough for a single person to pass through.

Once inside the cave, an Australian diver compared the conditions to “diving through black coffee.” After 14 days of navigating some of the most treacherous conditions they had ever faced, the Thai cave divers and their foreign colleagues managed to bring five of the miners back to the surface safely. However, two miners who were trapped even deeper within the cave were still awaiting rescue. Their condition at the time was unknown.

At that point, the Thai team was forced to withdraw, saying its members were beyond exhaustion and that the cave system had become too unstable to safely continue the search, according to the rescue coordinator. The coordinator told media that hopes of finding the two remaining miners were very low.

Other rescuers continued pumping water out of the cave in hopes of creating conditions that would allow divers to reach the remaining two miners.