Morocco buries “little Rayan” who died trapped in the well
Moroccans attended on Monday the funeral of Rayan, a five-year-old boy who spent five days trapped in a well, which triggered a major rescue operation that gripped the world but ended in tragedy.
The boy had fallen down a narrow, 32-meter (100-foot) dry well last Tuesday, which triggered a complex earth-moving operation to try to reach him without triggering a landslide.
Lustful people had flooded social media with messages of sympathy and prayers for him to be taken out alive, but their hopes were dashed.
On Saturday night, crowds cheered as rescue workers cleared the last handfuls of land to reach him, after the marathon digging in the village of Ighrane in northern Morocco’s poor Rif mountains.
But the joy turned to sadness when the royal cabinet of the North African nation announced that the boy was dead.
King Mohammed VI called his parents to express their condolences.
The child’s body was taken to a military hospital in the capital, Rabat, with his parents.
On Monday, it was transported to Douar Zaouia Cemetery near his village, where hundreds of mourners attended his funeral, AFP reporters said.
Nation in shock Ryan’s father Khaled Aourram said he had repaired the well when his son fell in, near the family’s home.
The shaft, only 45 centimeters (18 inches) across, was too narrow for Rayan to reach directly, and widening it was considered too risky – so earthworkers dug a wide slope into the hill.
Rescue teams, using bulldozers and front loaders, dug out the surrounding red soil down to the level where the boy was trapped, before drilling teams carefully dug a horizontal tunnel to reach him from the side to avoid causing a landslide.
Large crowds came to offer their support, sang and prayed to encourage the rescuers who worked around the clock.
But the boy’s death shocked Moroccans.
Mourad Fazoui in Rabat mourned what he said was a disaster. “May his soul rest in peace and may God open the gates of heaven for him,” said the salesman.
The Arab daily Assabah criticized the excavation of illicit wells and said many were used to irrigate cannabis widely grown in northern Morocco.
Social media across the Arab world was flooded with messages of support, grief and praise for rescue workers.
“He has carried people around him,” said one Twitter user.
But it lamented a “dystopian world” in which “Arab nations are being moved” by Morocco’s rescue operation for the child while a large number of infants die in conflict or famine in Yemen and Syria.
(AFP)
