RABAT— Moroccan emergency crews found a five-year-old boy dead at the bottom of a well late Saturday in a tragic end to a painstaking five-day rescue operation that gripped the nation and beyond.
“Following the tragic accident which cost the life of the child Rayan Oram, His Majesty King Mohammed VI called the parents of the boy who died after falling down the well,” a statement from the royal court said.
But news of his death sent a chill through the cold mountain air of his home village of Ighrane in the Rif mountains of northern Morocco where thousands of volunteers and well-wishers had gathered this week in a show of solidarity with his family.
The boy’s parents walk down the slope into the cut, visibly crushed, before returning and boarding an ambulance without saying a word.
There was no official word on the boy’s condition until Moroccan media carried the palace statement.
By mid-afternoon Saturday, rescue crews, using bulldozers and front-end loaders, had excavated the surrounding red earth down to the level where the boy was trapped, and drill teams began work on excavating a horizontal tunnel to reach him from the side.
The more time passed, the more fears mounted over Rayan’s condition.
Onlookers applauded to encourage the rescuers, sang religious songs or prayed, chanting in unison “Allahu akbar” (God is greatest).
“We are showing solidarity with this child, who is dear to Morocco and the whole world,” said onlooker Hafid El-Azzouz, who lives in the region.
The operation made the landscape resemble a construction site.
Overnight they worked non-stop under powerful floodlights that gave a gloomy air to the scene.
He said earlier in the week that he had been repairing the well when the boy fell in.
One Twitter user paid tribute to rescue workers working around the clock for days, saying, “they are real-life heroes”.
The boy’s ordeal echoed a tragedy in Spain in early 2019 when a two-year-old child died after falling into an abandoned well 25 centimetres wide and more than 70 metres deep.
Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK