After being extracted from the hole on Saturday evening, the remains of the 5-year-old boy, accompanied by his parents, were transported to the military hospital in Rabat to carry out an autopsy and determine the causes of death, according to local media.
Fadel SENNA/AFP
Rayan’s death triggered considerable emotion, amplified by social networks, in Morocco and around the world.
“The silence is terrible this morning in the village. Everyone was praying that he would come out alive. Everyone cried, ”testified a relative of the family, the day after the macabre discovery.
“The fall of a child reminded the world of the values of humanity,” commented the site of public television SNRT.
Abroad, one of the strongest reactions came from the coach of the Algerian football team, Djamel Belmadi, who offered moving condolences to the family of little Rayan, at a time when relations between Algiers and Rabat are at their lowest.
“Our pain and our pain are great, but will never equal those of his parents and loved ones,” he wrote on the Algerian federation website, saying he was “upset”.
In fact, the tragedy sparked in Algeria an avalanche of messages of compassion on the internet despite the political rivalry between the two enemy brothers from the Maghreb. “He will have succeeded where leaders and the media have failed. He brought people together around him,” opined a user on Twitter.
A sign of the shock and emotion that gripped the kingdom, it was the royal cabinet that 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.
Tribute to lifeguards
Everyone paid tribute to the tireless efforts of the rescuers whose race against time 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, in all languages. “Little angel, you fought to the end, a hero,” greeted a surfer.
Rayan had accidentally fallen on Tuesday into a 32-meter dry well, narrow and difficult to access, dug near the family home in Ighrane. From the start of the drama, thousands of supporters had rushed in a sign of solidarity and camped on the spot, in this mountainous area of the Rif, at nearly 700 meters above sea level.