After the shock and emotion that accompanied his tragic death, Morocco buries little Rayan on Monday, stuck for five days at the bottom of a well in a poor region in the north of the kingdom, a drama that kept the world in suspense. . The child’s funeral is to take place near the village of Ighrane, where the tragedy unfolded, probably in the early afternoon, according to AFP journalists on the spot.
At the beginning of the morning, villagers cleaned the surroundings of the old cemetery of Douar Zaouia, located in the middle of the woods 6 km from the village, in order to welcome the crowd of participants. After being extracted from the hole, the remains of the 5-year-old boy, accompanied by his parents, were transported to the military hospital in Rabat, probably for an autopsy.
Considerable emotion
Rayan’s death triggered considerable emotion, amplified by social networks, in Morocco and around the world. “The silence is terrible this (Sunday) morning in the village. Everyone was praying that he would come out alive. Everyone cried,” a relative of the family told AFP. “The fall of a child reminded the world of the values of humanity,” commented the public television site SNRT on Sunday.
Abroad, Pope Francis greeted “a whole (Moroccan) people who came together to save Rayan”, during the Angelus prayer celebrated in the Vatican. “They tried everything, unfortunately he did not survive. But what an example. Thank you to these people for this testimony”, said François. A sign of the wave of sympathy caused by the tragedy, it was the royal cabinet which announced the death of the child on Saturday evening. King Mohammed VI himself called Rayan’s parents to offer his condolences, and they thanked, moved, the sovereign, the authorities and all the rescuers.
A shower of tributes to little Rayan
Work began on Sunday to fill in the relief tunnels drilled by the rescuers as well as the well. Moroccans were still in shock. “It’s a disaster, let’s hope that the soul (of Rayan) rests in peace. We wish his parents and all his family patience and comfort,” summed up a resident of Rabat. All paid tribute to the tireless efforts of the rescuers.
Their race against the clock was followed live by countless Internet users. And as soon as the death was announced, tributes on social networks poured in from all over the world, from neighboring and rival Algeria to France or the United States, in all languages. “Little angel, you fought until the end, a hero”, greeted a surfer on Twitter. “He will have succeeded where leaders and the media have failed. He has brought people together around him,” opined another Internet user.
A dissonant voice lamented a “dystopian world in which all Arab nations are moved by the rescue of a child in Morocco while dozens die every day of starvation or bombardment in Yemen, Syria”, before adding : “NB: All lives matter”.
Clandestine wells?
Rayan had accidentally fallen on Tuesday into a 32-meter dry well, narrow and difficult to access, dug near the family home in Ighrane. Entering a horizontal breach on Saturday, the rescuers had continued their work centimeter by centimeter, digging by hand to avoid any landslide. Until Friday, rescuers tried to get oxygen and water to Rayan, without certainty that he could use them.
As soon as the tragedy broke out, thousands of sympathizers had come running in a sign of solidarity and camped on the spot, in this mountainous area of the Rif, at an altitude of nearly 700 meters. If the drama brought Moroccans together in a spirit of unity, the Arabic-speaking daily Assabah denounced on Monday the proliferation of clandestine and unsecured wells in this region which would be used to irrigate crops, including that of cannabis, according to the newspaper.
This accident echoed a tragedy that occurred in early 2019 in Andalusia (Spain), where two-year-old Julen died after falling into a well 25 centimeters in diameter and more than 100 meters deep.