Five villagers who vanished inside a flooded cave in Laos were found alive Wednesday by elite divers — but now crews are racing against time to rescue them, and find two others who remain missing.

“We’ve found five people alive and all safe. There are still two people we are searching for,”  the organization Rescue Volunteer for People said online.

The five villagers were found sitting on a rock and surrounded by floodwater inside an underground cavern in the province of Xaisomboun — about 50 miles north of the capital Vientiane — a week after they vanished. 

The rescuers told the trapped locals, “Don’t cry, don’t cry,” when they found them, according to GoPro footage reported by CNN.

But, they are still trapped by floodwaters, and officials are developing an extraction plan.

A team of 15 divers, who helped rescue a group of Thai youth soccer players from a cave in June 2018, was deployed as part of the daring operation – but they had to battle narrow tunnels and collapse hazards.

Divers cleared around 15 meters of obstacles to reach the trapped group. 

The villagers entered the cave in the Southeast Asian nation to look for gold — but became trapped when heavy rains suddenly flooded the entrance.

The five survivors are “all healthy and in good spirits, but the extraction is still ahead and it ain’t going to be easy,” Finnish diver Mikko Paasi, who helped rescue the soccer players, wrote on social media.

Paasi previously spoke about the “race against time” to rescue the locals, alluding to the challenges crews faced.

Rescuers had to carry out a steep 2.5 mile walk just to reach the cave entrance before making their way inside through muddy passageways and narrow tunnels.

“It is so narrow that you have to tilt sideways, duck low, and crawl flat on your stomach to get through,” Thai diver Kengkad Bongkawong told CNN, describing the cave entrance.

Passageways were so tight that rescuers could only proceed in a single file – with one such tunnel just 23 inches wide.

“Inside the mine, you have to navigate hundreds of meters of constant restrictions, flood waters, collapse hazards and high risk of contaminated air quality,” Paasi said, speaking on the potential dangers crews faced.

Rescuers were making progress over the weekend before being stopped in their tracks thanks to rising floodwaters. 

At one point, they were approximately just 40 meters away from reaching the group, the Telegraph reported, before being forced to backtrack.

There has been no official confirmation on why the villagers went into the cave, although the rescuers involved said that they went in to look for gold deposits.

Laos is not known as a major gold producer, but its mining industry is sizable considering the country’s developing economy.

The mining sector is fueled by foreign direct investment, largely from neighboring Thailand and China.

Copper is a major export, and mining for rare earth elements, needed for most modern technologies, has become more common in Laos recently.

The Lao Foreign Ministry on Tuesday said it has no official information to share with the media.

The Southeast Asian nation is a one-party communist state with no organized opposition, and the government keeps a tight lid on information.

With Post wires