All 12 boys successfully rescued from Thailand cave

All 12 boys and their football coach were successfully rescued from the flooded cave in Thailand on Tuesday.

The dramatic days-long rescue mission was accomplished around 6:30pm local time on Tuesday, less than nine hours after the last leg of the operation to save the wayward “Wild Boar” youth soccer team commenced, according to the Thai Navy SEALs.

The boys have now been ferried to a hospital in the city of Chiang Rai.

On their Facebook page, the SEALs posted a message which said: “Tonight, all the Wild Boars will be reunited.”

The SEALs later posted another message, writing, "We are not sure if this is a miracle, a science or what. All the thirteen Wild Boars are now out of the cave."

On Tuesday, a team of 19 divers helped escort the last team members out.

Rescuer workers walk toward the cave entrance in Mae Sai on Tuesday

Four boys emerged on Monday and four on Sunday.

The news came more than two weeks after the 25-year-old coach and his team went missing in the dark Tham Luang Nang Non cave in northern Thailand.

The massive search-and-rescue operation started in earnest on Sunday, when the first four boys were extracted from the subterranean maze. In just three days, international dive teams managed to get all 13 out of the cave as they raced against astronomical odds and a pending monsoon rainstorm that threatened to swamp the cave again.

Jesada Chokedamrongsuk, a physician from the Thai ministry of public health, said the eight boys rescued on Sunday and Monday were “cheerful”. Two boys among the first batch to be freed, who he said were aged between 14 and 16, had shown possible signs of pneumonia and all had low temperatures when they arrived.

They will remain in hospital for at least seven days. This mean they will probably have to turn down a Fifa invitation to the World Cup final on Sunday