Five of seven people trapped in a flooded cave for a week in Laos have been found alive, according to Laotian and Thai rescuers.

The divers are still looking to locate two more people inside the cave and plan the rescue operation.

The seven people entered the cave in Laos’s central Xaisomboun province on May 20 but got trapped by a landslide triggered by heavy rain, according to a local rescue group and the state-run Lao Phattana News.

A Thai rescue team, which includes divers who helped free the young Thai soccer team stuck in a cave in 2018, joined the operation on Sunday and reported significant progress.

The rescuers cleared 15 metres of obstacles and had gradually moved towards where they believed the group was trapped.

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“We’ve found five people alive and all safe,” Laotian rescue group Rescue Volunteer for People said in a social media post.

“There are still two people we are searching for.”

A video posted by a Thai rescue group involved in the mission appeared to show the moment divers emerged from the water and discovered the trapped villagers. 

In the footage, the people, wearing headlamps, were sitting on a rock surrounded by floodwater.

Other videos showed rescuers inside and outside the cave cheering, jumping around and hugging each other in joy after the discovery.

The cave is located in a rugged, remote area about 120 kilometres north of the capital, Vientiane. 

Rescuers at the scene have detailed on social media the challenging mountainous terrain and heavy rain that has hampered their work.

Videos shared online by Thai rescuers showed that reaching the cave’s entrance required a steep hike on foot of roughly 4km.

The entrance is also steep and rocky, and barely wide enough for a single person at a time to climb through.

Rescuers have been gathering outside the cave’s entrance.  (Metta Tham Rescue Kalasin)

Specialist rescue diver Mikko Paasi from Finland said earlier on Wednesday that rescuers needed to “navigate hundreds of metres of constant restrictions, flood waters, collapse hazards and high risk of contaminated air quality” inside the cave, which he called an “abandoned gold mine”.

The Finnish diver was one of the rescuers who aided the dramatic 2018 retrieval of the “Wild Boars” team, who spent nearly three weeks trapped by flash floods in the Tham Luang cave complex in Thailand’s north.