Rescuers Race to Save 5-Year-Old Boy Trapped in Deep Moroccan Well

Deployment of bulldozers and heavy equipment, excavators, drilling work... A team of rescuers is conducting a rescue operation to try to save Rayan, who accidentally fell 32 meters deep into a well in the village of Ighrane, in the Tamorot commune (province of Chefchaouen) last Tuesday while his father was repairing it. "I managed to talk to the child. I asked him if he could hear me and there was an answer. I waited a minute and I saw him starting to use the oxygen," says Imad Fahmy, a rescuer.

The rescue teams could not go down directly into the well, because "its diameter does not exceed 45 centimeters," said Abdelhabi Temrani, head of the rescue operation, on public television Al Oula. The rescuers also thought "of widening the diameter of the well but this was not possible due to the nature of the earth which could lead to a collapse," said the government spokesman for his part. According to the surveyors, the risk of collapse would be too high.

The rescuers then decided to dig around the well to save the child. They have already reached a depth of 27 meters and hope to reach 32 meters soon, before making a 3-meter horizontal breach and retrieving the boy.