El mundo se solidariza con Marruecos por el fallecimiento del pequeño Rayan
After five frantic days of operation against the clock to rescue little Rayan, the five-year-old Moroccan boy trapped since Tuesday in a narrow, 32-metre-deep well in the town of Inghran, in northern Morocco, was rescued lifeless. The tragic end shocked the country and the rest of the world, which was closely following developments.
Minutes after the removal of the boy's body, the Royal House confirmed Rayan's death and expressed its condolences to the family. An ambulance was waiting at the entrance to the borehole, where his parents, Khaled Oram and Wassima Khersheesh, had been waiting since Saturday morning to receive a phone call from King Mohammed VI.
The five-year-old reportedly died hours before being rescued because of the harsh conditions in which he had been kept since Tuesday, although the cause of death is still unknown. Authorities lowered an oxygen and water tube into the area where he was being held on Thursday, and lowered a camera to observe his condition and monitor his progress. In those images, Rayan appeared to be still breathing, which gave the family hope and led the operative to believe in a miracle.
Hundreds of people gathered in the vicinity of the well despite the perimeter closure of the authorities, who cut off the main roads to access the site, and did not cease to encourage the rescue operation with chants and prayers. Dozens of people came from all over the country to support the rescue work, and thousands more followed the rescue operation on television and social networks.
Rayan fell into a well near the family's home on 1 February last Tuesday. His father claimed at the time that the surface was covered with a barrel, but that the boy had managed to pull it away. In any case, as soon as the alarm was raised, the authorities began to work flat out.
The first option was to drill into the well down which the child fell. An unsuccessful attempt forced the authorities to drill a parallel tunnel and then approach Rayan's location. But at an advanced stage, the authorities came up against a rock that delayed the process for three hours in a delicate operation in which the slightest crack could have caused a detachment.
The messages from Morocco's King Mohamed VI, whose cabinet confirmed the death of the little boy and expressed its condolences "in this painful experience", and from Prime Minister Aziz Akhannouch, who conveyed on his behalf and on behalf of the rest of the government his "most sincere condolences to the parents of the child Rayan", have been joined by numerous voices of political representatives at the international level, in a rescue that has had a global resonance.
Especially in the Arab world, where the Qatari television channel Al Jazeera has been broadcasting the operation live for the last three days. The channel itself echoed the solidarity shown by Algerian society with Morocco despite the diplomatic rift. The event evoked the memory of Ayyash Mahjoubi, a 26-year-old who was trapped in a well for six days in Algeria.
Pope Francis on Sunday praised the Moroccan authorities for the rescue operation. During the Angelus Mass, the pontiff called the efforts to extract little Rayan alive an "example": "The whole town working to save a child. They tried everything. Unfortunately they did not succeed," the Pope stressed.
Other voices, such as those of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, vice-president and ruler of Dubai, offered their condolences to the boy's family "and to the fraternal Moroccan nation and all of humanity who mourned his loss". This message was echoed by Israeli Prime Minister Natfali Bennett and his Malaysian counterpart Ismail Sabri Yaakob.
On Facebook, French President Emmanuel Macron let "the family of little Rayan and the Moroccan people know that we share their grief". Messages on social networks have multiplied in the last few hours, with thousands of users from all over the world sharing their condolences and memories of the little boy with the hashtag #SaveRayan.
