Caroline Baudry with AFP
modified to
1:29 p.m., February 04, 2022
Rescuers are working Friday, for the fourth consecutive day, in the hope of extracting alive little Rayan, a five-year-old boy who fell into a deep well in a village in northern Morocco, the kingdom holding its breath. The ballet of mechanical machines deployed to clear the ground around the 32-meter-deep well did not stop all night, AFP noted.
Stuck in a dry well
According to local authorities, the bulldozers have already dug up to 28 meters deep and preparations are underway to dig a horizontal gap of a few meters towards the well to reach the small Rayan. But the phase is delicate given the risk of landslide, they added. The operation is very complex due to the nature of the soil, as some layers are sandy and others rocky.
The boy, whose fate moves the whole country and beyond, accidentally fell on Tuesday afternoon into the dry well, narrow and difficult to access, dug near the family residence in a village not far from the locality of Bab Berred , in the province of Chefchaouen. “In a moment of inattention, the little one fell into the well,” testified Rayan’s father.
A race against time
More than 3 meters to reach the small Rayan. Thursday evening, a rescuer was able to slip into the extremely narrow right to try, in vain, to go up it. “I was able to speak with the child, I told him ‘uncle is coming’, he answered me but I had little oxygen left, I had to go back up”, testifies a rescuer. According to local media, the child was still alive on Thursday evening.
Sympathy and solidarity on social networks
Water and oxygen were piped to the bottom of the cramped well. A medical team was dispatched to the scene to “carry out the initial examinations and resuscitation interventions for the child once rescued”. A medical helicopter is on site to take care of him.
The ordeal of little Rayan arouses a lot of sympathy and solidarity on social networks. For the second consecutive day, the hashtag #sauvezrayan (in Arabic) is among the main trends on Twitter in Morocco. In addition, there are also many local residents at the accident site, which sometimes hinders the work of the rescue teams.