Moroccan rescuers entered the tunnel on Saturday afternoon that leads to the pocket where Rayan, the 5-year-old child who fell on February 1, is.
They are accompanied by a medical team but it was not immediately possible to know when they will come out. The rescuers still hope to find alive the child whose state of health is unknown.
The 32-meter-deep hole, narrow and difficult to access, is located in the village of Ighrane, near Bab Berred, in the north of the country.
Drilling operations were completed on Saturday around 1:30 p.m.
food and oxygen
Indeed, video images filmed by a camera that could have been routed very close to the child showed during the night that he was still alive. Water, some food, and oxygen were slipped to him to allow him to survive. “I managed to speak with the child. I asked him if he could hear me and there was a response. I waited a minute and saw that he was starting to use oxygen,” a paramedic told reporters. It is not known, however, whether he managed to drink or eat.
Slowness and risk of landslide
A person in charge of the rescue operation, Abdelhadi Tamrani, quoted by the public television site 2M, said he had “great hopes” of extracting the child alive. The risk of landslide hangs over the last phase of the rescue operation due to the nature of the ground at the accident site, some areas being rocky, others very sandy.
The well in which the child is trapped measures barely 45 centimeters in diameter but it is impossible to enlarge the opening of the well without putting the child’s life in danger. In harsh conditions, rescuers worked non-stop through the night under the glare of powerful searchlights, bringing a gloomy touch to the scene of the drama.
“I remain hopeful that my child will come out of this well alive”
“I remain hopeful that my child will come out of this well alive,” Rayan’s father told state television 2M on Friday evening. “I thank all those mobilized and those who support us in Morocco and elsewhere. »
On site, a crowd of supporters still surrounds the well. Some camp there despite the freezing cold of this mountainous area of the Rif, at nearly 700 meters above sea level. The child has received thousands of messages of support on social networks, his fate is causing concern around the world, from the Maghreb to Iraq, Yemen, Canada or the United States and in all languages. (English, French, Portuguese).
The people of the village are holding their breath, and the whole country is watching the situation closely. Dozens of live videos are available on Twitter, where the hashtag #Rayan peaks at the top of the Top Tweets. “Can’t wait for the moment when I read the tweet that will say that #rayan is in the arms of his parents”, hopes a surfer on Twitter.