The 12 boys trapped in a cave in Thailand with their coach have been discovered alive after nine days

Rescuers have found the 12 boys and their football coach who have been missing inside a flooded mountain cave in northern Thailand for more than a week.

“They are all safe, but the mission is not completed, local Governor Narongsak Osatanakorn said. "Our mission is to search, rescue and return, so far we just found them. Next mission is to bring them out from the cave and send them home.“

The Chiang Rai governor said experts would continue to drain the waters out of the cave while sending doctors and nurses to dive in to check the health of the boys and their coach.

“If the doctors say their physical condition is strong enough to be moved, they will take them out from the cave,” he said. “We will look after them until they can return to school.“

Divers from a Thai navy SEAL unit were within 500 metres of a chamber containing an elevated rock where they boys might have sought refuge.

The boys, aged 11 to 16, and their 25-year-old coach entered Tham Luang cave in Chiang Rai province on 23 June, when heavy rains flooded key passages of the cave and blocked the way out.

National news has been dominated by updates from the search, which involves more than 1,000 personnel, including rescue teams from Britain, the United States and elsewhere.

Progress towards a rescue was slow, as muddy water having risen to fill sections of the cave and forced the divers to withdraw for safety reasons.

When water levels dropped Sunday, divers went forward with a more methodical approach, deploying a rope line and extra oxygen supplies along the way.

Doctors have said the boys could survive for days without food, they needed to find water clean enough to drink.

In addition to the divers, teams have been working to pump out water as well as divert groundwater.

Other efforts have focused on finding shafts on the mountainside which might serve as a back door to the blocked-off areas where the missing may be sheltering.

Teams have been combing the mountainside looking for fissures which might lead to such shafts.

Several have been found and explorers have been able to descend into some, but so far it is not clear whether they lead to anywhere useful.

Additional reporting by agencies