CHIANG RAI, Thailand: The 12 boys and their football coach rescued from a flooded cave in Thailand waved, smiled and offered traditional “wai” greetings in their first public appearance on Wednesday at a national broadcast in the northern province of Chiang Rai.
Doctors, relatives and friends, some in yellow traditional garb, greeted the boys, aged 11 to 16, and their 25-year-old coach, who wore T-shirts emblazoned with a red graphic of a wild boar and carried in footballs they kicked gently on the set.
“Bringing the Wild Boars Home,” read a banner in Thai on the set, designed to resemble a football field, complete with goalposts and nets, where the boys arrayed themselves on a dais, beside five members of the rescue team.
A crowd of media and onlookers was penned behind barricades as the group arrived in vans from the hospital where it has stayed since last week’s international effort to extricate it from a flooded cave complex where it had been trapped.
“Today we will get the answers to the questions we have been wondering, from the boys themselves,” said Suthichai Yoon, presenter of the 45-minute program being televised live on dozens of channels.
The boys, who sported crisp haircuts, had gained an average of 3 kg (6.6 lb) each since the rescue, and rain through confidence-building exercises ahead of Wednesday’s event, the hospital director said.
The boys, their coach and some rescuers will answer a series of questions journalists submitted in advance, officials said.
“We don’t know what wounds the kids are carrying in their hearts,” said justice ministry official Tawatchai Thaikaew, who asked for the boys’ privacy to be respected after the discharge, for fear that media attention could affect their mental health.
“The media know the children are in a difficult situation, they have overcome peril and if you ask risky questions then it could break the law,” he told reporters.
The group had planned to explore the Tham Luang cave complex for about an hour after football practice on June 23. But a rainy season downpour flooded the tunnels, trapping them.
Two British divers found them on July 2, squatting on a mound in a chamber several kilometers inside the complex. All were brought to safety during the three-day rescue, organized by Thai navy SEALs and a global team of cave-diving experts.
The rescue effort drew global media attention and hundreds of journalists, many of whom left after it wrapped up, but excitement picked up again in the usually sleepy town of Chiang Rai ahead of the much-anticipated appearance.
King Maha Vajiralongkorn has granted permission for a party in the Royal Plaza, a public square in Bangkok’s old town, to thank the Thai and foreign participants in the rescue, the government said.
Earlier, Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha told reporters the celebration would feature a banquet and entertainment, but gave no further details.
Thai cave boys wave and smile in first public appearance after rescue
Thai cave boys wave and smile in first public appearance after rescue
- A crowd of media and onlookers was penned behind barricades as the group arrived in vans from the hospital
- Earlier, Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha told reporters the celebration would feature a banquet and entertainment, but gave no further details
Italian suspect questioned over Bosnia ‘weekend sniper’ killings
- The octogenarian former truck driver from the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region of northeast Italy, is suspected by Milan prosecutors of “voluntary homicide aggravated by abject motives,” according to Italian news agency ANSA
ROME: An 80-year-old man suspected of being a “weekend sniper” who paid the Bosnian Serb army to shoot civilians during the 1990s siege of Sarajevo was questioned Monday in Milan, media reported.
The octogenarian former truck driver from the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region of northeast Italy, is suspected by Milan prosecutors of “voluntary homicide aggravated by abject motives,” according to Italian news agency ANSA.
Lawyer Giovanni Menegon told journalists that his client had answered questions from prosecutors and police and “reaffirmed his complete innocence.”
In October, prosecutors opened an investigation into what Italian media dubbed “weekend snipers” or “war tourists“: mostly wealthy, gun-loving, far-right sympathizers who allegedly gathered in Trieste and were taken to the hills surrounding Sarajevo where they fired on civilians for sport.
During the nearly four-year siege of Sarajevo that began in April 1992 some 11,541 men, women and children were killed and more than 50,000 people wounded by Bosnian Serb forces, according to official figures.
Il Giornale newspaper reported last year that the would-be snipers paid Bosnian Serb forces up to the equivalent of €100,000 ($115,000) per day to shoot at civilians below them.
The suspect — described by the Italian press as a hunting enthusiast who is nostalgic for Fascism — is said to have boasted publicly about having gone “man hunting.”
Witness statements, particularly from residents of his village, helped investigators to track the suspect, freelance journalist Marianna Maiorino said.
“According to the testimonies, he would tell his friends at the village bar about what he did during the war in the Balkans,” said Maiorino, who researched the allegations and was herself questioned as part of the investigation.
The suspect is “described as a sniper, someone
who enjoyed going to Sarajevo to kill people,” she added.
The suspect told local newspaper Messaggero Veneto Sunday he had been to Bosnia during the war, but “for work, not for hunting.” He added that his public statements had been exaggerated and he was “not worried.”
The investigation opened last year followed a complaint filed by Italian journalist and writer Ezio Gavanezzi, based on allegations revealed in the documentary “Sarajevo Safari” by Slovenian director Miran Zupanic in 2022.
Gavanezzi was contacted in August 2025 by the former mayor of Sarajevo, Benjamina Karic, who filed a complaint in Bosnia in 2022 after the same documentary was broadcast.
The Bosnia and Herzegovina prosecutor’s office confirmed on Friday that a special war crimes department was investigating alleged foreign snipers during the siege of Sarajevo.
Bosnian prosecutors requested information from Italian counterparts at the end of last year, while also contacting the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals in The Hague, it said. That body performs some of the functions previously carried out by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
Sarajevo City Council adopted a decision last month authorizing the current mayor, Samir Avdic, to “join the criminal proceedings” before the Italian
courts, in order to support Italian prosecutors.
