Spacing for multiple footnotes on one paragraph in r markdown

This is a rather simple problem that should have a simple solution, right? I have been trying to remove the space between footnote numbers and I could use some help.

Here is some sample code:

dat$place <- c("South Atlantic", "Gulf of Mexico", "Pacific")
Footnotes.list$ft_IOModel <- "Footnote_1"
Footnotes.list$ft_EFL <- "Footnote_2"    
Footnotes.list$ft_WFL <- "Footnote_3"

for (i in 1:length(dat$place)) {
  rmarkdown::render(Comm_Region.Rmd, 
                    output_dir = output,
                    output_file = paste0(filename,".docx"))
}

Here is the Comm_Region.Rmd markdown code (focusing on the code for "South Atlantic" and "Gulf of Mexico"):

retailers.`r if(place == "South Atlantic") {
paste0("^[",Footnotes.list$ft_IOModel,"] ^,^ ^[", Footnotes.list$ft_EFL,"]")} 
else if (place == "Gulf of Mexico") {
paste0("^[",Footnotes.list$ft_IOModel,"] ^,^ ^[", Footnotes.list$ft_WFL,"]")} 
else {
paste0("^[",Footnotes.list$ft_IOModel,"]")}`

This is what I'm looking for:

This is what I keep getting:

I understand that I need to remove the spaces before and after the comma ( ^,^ ^) to get the desired output; however, when I do that the whole code breaks and the footnotes no longer appear at the bottom of the page. I've also tried LaTex but to no avail. There must be a better way to write this. Any suggestions?

If you are happy to work in LaTeX this may help using fnpct package.

---
title: "Multiple footnotes"
output: pdf_document  

header-includes:
  - \usepackage{fnpct}
---

```{r setup, include=FALSE}
knitr::opts_chunk$set(echo = FALSE)
```


```{r footnotes, include=FALSE}

place <- "South Atlantic"
Footnotes.list <- list()
Footnotes.list$ft_IOModel <- "Footnote 1"
Footnotes.list$ft_EFL <- "Footnote 2"
Footnotes.list$ft_WFL <- "Footnote 3"

```



Retailers.`r if(place == "South Atlantic"){
   paste0("\\footnote{", Footnotes.list$ft_IOModel, "}\\footnote{", Footnotes.list$ft_EFL, "}")
 }else if(place == "Gulf of Mexico"){
    paste0("\\footnote{", Footnotes.list$ft_IOModel, "}\\footnote{", Footnotes.list$ft_WFL, "}")
    }else{
    paste0("\\footnote{", Footnotes.list$ft_IOModel, "}")
 }`