Caroline Baudry with AFP 2:57 p.m., February 05, 2022

Five days after little Rayan, 5, fell into a well in Morocco, rescuers are still on the bridge trying to get him out.

The boy "appears lying on his side, from behind" in the images of an inspection camera integrated into the cramped well where he fell on Tuesday, but it is "impossible to say that he is alive with certainty".

Engaged in a race against time, Moroccan rescuers are progressing very slowly on Saturday to try to save little Rayan, a five-year-old child who fell into a deep well five days ago, whom they hope to find alive.

Stuck in a hole 32 meters deep

The boy "appears lying on his side, from behind" in the images of an inspection camera integrated into the cramped well where he fell on Tuesday, but it is "impossible to say that he is alive with certainty", a rescue operation manager Abdelhadi Tamrani told AFP.

The chief rescuer, however, told other media that he had "great hopes" of extracting him alive from the narrow and 32-meter deep hole, dug near the family residence in Ighrane, not far from the village of Bab Berred, in the province of Chefchaouen.

The rescuers tried to send oxygen and water through tubes and bottles down to Rayan, without certainty that he could have used them, according to AFP journalists.

The hand drilling of a horizontal tunnel of a few meters is progressing at a brisk pace in this poor locality in northern Morocco.

“We have about two meters left to complete the excavation of the horizontal tunnel, hoping not to face rocks again”, detailed Abdelhadi Tamrani.

In the early morning, a major obstacle slowed down the operations: the rescuers fought with a large rock, blocking their way.

According to local authorities, engineering teams got rid of it after three hours using small electrical equipment to avoid cracks and cave-ins. This risk hangs over the rescue operation due to the nature of the ground at the scene of the incident, some areas being rocky, others very sandy. Thousands of sympathizers have come in recent days, some from afar, as a sign of solidarity, and are camping on the spot despite the freezing cold of this mountainous area of ​​the Rif, at an altitude of nearly 700 meters.

Metal barriers have been in place since Friday to contain the crowd and prevent it from hampering the work of rescuers.

"We are living through a real disaster in the Ighrane region. We pray to God that he be saved in order to bring happiness to all Moroccans," onlooker Othmane Azzouz told AFP.

"Hold On Little Rayan"

"I remain hopeful that my child will come out of this well alive," Rayan's father told state television 2M on Friday night. "I thank all those mobilized and those who support us in Morocco and elsewhere." The child who was playing near his house disappeared on Tuesday around 2 p.m. (1 p.m. GMT): "The whole family mobilized to look for him until we learned that he had fallen into the well", said to the local press the mother of the child, her eyes filled with tears.

Rayan's fate has aroused a lot of sympathy on social networks around the world, from the Maghreb to Iraq, Yemen, Canada or the United States and in all languages ​​(English, French, Portuguese).

"The rescuers are literally moving a mountain to save little #Rayan, I hope their efforts will not be in vain", commented a user.

"Hold on little Rayan, hold on please," another tweeted.

The excitement around the accident remains so strong that the hashtag #sauvezrayan continued to prance on Saturday at the top of the main Twitter trends in Morocco.

"I can't wait for the moment when I read the tweet that will say that #Rayan is in the arms of his parents", hopes a surfer on Twitter. 

“Let the rescuers work”

A team is ready to rescue the child as soon as he is released, local authorities told AFP.

A medical helicopter is on standby.

"Our hearts are with the family and we pray to God that he finds his loved ones as soon as possible," said government spokesman Mustapha Baitas, urging the crowd "to let the rescuers work to save this child".

This accident echoes a tragedy that occurred in early 2019 in Andalusia (Spain), where a two-year-old child died after falling into a well 25 centimeters in diameter and more than 100 meters deep.

The body of little Julen had been found after 13 days of research on an exceptional scale.