Rescuers are less than three feet away from a boy stuck in a 100-foot well in Morocco, after tunneling toward the 5-year-old in an operation that has transfixed the country and its North African neighbors for days.
While the boy’s latest condition was unclear, the team still had hope of getting Rayan out alive on Saturday morning. “It’s hard to determine his condition … but there is great, great hope,” one of the members, Abdelhadi Tamarani, said earlier.
For four days, the team has worked around-the-clock to safely get to Rayan, after he fell into a dry well and became trapped between its narrow walls, in a village in northern Morocco. The dramatic race to save him has gripped Morocco and neighboring countries, with crowds gathering to join his parents and broadcasters live-streaming the efforts.
The last few feet may be the hardest. The prospect of a wall collapsing or shaking soil threatening days of delicate work had bystanders holding their breath and messages of support pouring in on social media where the hashtag #SaveRayan turned into a rallying cry.
On Saturday afternoon, the emergency team were less than a few feet away from the boy, in what Moroccan state TV channel 2M described it as “the final stage” of a mission that has involved first responders, topographical engineers and bulldozers.
Rescuers, who had used rope to send oxygen down to the child and a camera to monitor him, said it was difficult to tell how much longer it would take as they evaluated how to descend toward him. The camera showed the boy lying on his side with facing a wall, making it hard to determine how he was doing, Tamarani said.
The team had drilled into the night to create a parallel tunnel. They were manually chipping away the final stretch that separated them from the boy, local media said.
An ambulance, a helicopter and medics waited at the site to take the boy to a hospital when the moment comes.
The depth and diameter of the location where he was lodged complicated attempts to pull him out. While the hole was too narrow to send someone down to get him, aggressive digging also risked collapsing the walls, forcing workers to move carefully to avoid injuring him further.