IGHRANE, Morocco —
Moroccans on Monday attended the
funeral of Rayan, a five-year-old boy who spent five days trapped down a well,
sparking a vast rescue operation that gripped the world but ended in tragedy.
اضافة اعلان
The boy had fallen down a narrow, 32m dry
well last Tuesday, sparking a complex earth-moving operation to try to reach
him without triggering a landslide.
Well-wishers had flooded social media with
messages of sympathy and prayers that he would be brought out alive, but their
hopes were dashed.
On Saturday night, crowds had cheered as
rescue workers cleared away the final handfuls of soil to reach him, after the
marathon digging operation in the village of Ighrane in northern Morocco's
impoverished Rif mountains.
But the joy turned to grief when the royal
cabinet of the
North African nation announced that the boy was dead.
King Mohammed VI called the parents to voice
his condolences.
The child's body was taken to a military
hospital in the capital Rabat, accompanied by his parents.
On Monday it was transported to the Douar
Zaouia cemetary near his village, where hundreds of mourners attended his
funeral, AFP journalists said.
Nation in shock
Rayan's father Khaled Aourram said he had
been repairing the well when his son fell in, close to the family home.
The shaft, just 45cm across, was too narrow
for
Rayan to be reached directly, and widening it was deemed too risky — so
earth movers dug a wide slope into the hill.
Rescue crews, using bulldozers and front-end
loaders, excavated the surrounding red earth down to the level where the boy
was trapped, before drill teams carefully dug a horizontal tunnel to reach him
from the side to avoid causing a landslide.
Vast crowds came to offer their support,
singing and praying to encourage the rescuers who worked around the clock.
But the boy's death left Moroccans in shock.
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 to him," the salesman said.
The Arabic daily newspaper Assabah
criticized the digging of unauthorized wells, saying many were used to irrigate
cannabis widely grown in Morocco's north.
Social media across the
Arab world were
flooded with messages of support, grief, and praise for rescue workers.
"He has brought people together around
him," one Twitter user said.
But one deplored a "dystopian
world" where "Arab nations are moved" by the Morocco rescue
operation for the child while vast numbers of infants die in conflict or famine
in Yemen and
Syria.
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