Rescuers edge closer to Moroccan boy trapped in well for five days

dpa Cairo Rescuers were desperately digging in Morocco on Saturday to reach a 5-year-old boy who has been stuck deep inside a well for five days. The chi...

dpa Cairo Rescuers were desperately digging in Morocco on Saturday to reach a 5-year-old boy who has been stuck deep inside a well for five days.The child, named Rayan, fell into the 32-metre-deep well near his family’s house in the village of Ighran in the northern province of Chefchaouen on Tuesday, prompting a frantic rescue operation.Efforts to haul him up have been hampered by the narrow diameter of the dry well and the fragile soil.In an attempt to bypass the obstacles, machines were used to dig a parallel shaft next to the well, and a horizontal tunnel to reach the boy, Moroccan media reported.The horizontal hole is being dug between the well and the parallel shaft using both manual work and electric tools to head off potential landslides.Efforts to rescue the boy have reached “very advanced stages,” a local official said on Saturday without details.“But it is hard to specify a time frame for the end of the operation because of the soil nature of the remaining part that will be dug in the horizontal hole linking the well and the parallel shaft,” the unnamed official told Morocco’s state news agency MAP.The soil of the site is a mix of sand and rocks, according to Moroccan media.Rescuers have been trying to keep the boy alive by providing him with water and oxygen supplies.They have also sent down a surveillance camera to check his health and communicate with him to keep him alert.It took rescuers more than three hours on Saturday to break up a big rock in the course of the digging aimed to get access to the boy, MAP reported.Rescuers were about 1.5 metres away from his site, state-affiliated television channel 2M reported in an update. The boy’s fate has riveted attention in the North African country and triggered an online wave of sympathy.