Almost two weeks after a boy fell into a 35 meter deep concrete pipe at a construction site in Vietnam, it has still not been possible to recover the ten-year-old's body.
The child was pronounced dead 100 hours after the horrific accident and unsuccessful attempts to pull the pipe out of the ground.
"We don't know exactly when we can pull the pipe up.
The work is ongoing, and the deeper the drilling, the more complex the geological conditions that the emergency services are confronted with," Doan Tan Buu, deputy head of government for Dong Thap province, told the German Press Agency on Thursday.
The ground at depth is extremely hard, he explained.
"We sent an 80-ton crane to the site, ready to pull up the pipe after the construction crews have removed the last few meters of soil." It's unclear whether this will take days or even weeks.
Experts from Japan would also help with the work.
Specialist warns against hasty rescue
An expert told Vietnamese media that the salvage should not be hasty because there is great frictional resistance at depth, also because the pipe is closed at the bottom.
It could break if the workers don't act carefully - and thus make the salvage much more difficult.
The disaster in south-west Vietnam made headlines around the world at the beginning of the year.
It is still unclear exactly where Nam is in the pipe.
It is only about 25 centimeters in diameter.
Authorities said no one thought a 10-year-old could be trapped so deep in the tube.
According to reports, there were only signs of life from the boy for the first ten minutes after the fall.