El rescate del niño Rayan entra en su fase final

Morocco is on tenterhooks over the situation of Rayan, the Moroccan child trapped since Tuesday in a narrow well 32 metres deep and 45 centimetres wide in the town of Inghran, located about 70 kilometres from Chaouen, in the north of the country. Rescue teams are working around the clock to rescue the five-year-old, whose condition is not yet known.

Rayan is only a few centimetres away from the technical team after they managed to overcome a rock in the area on Saturday morning. During the final stages of the drilling, the operation encountered this setback, which prolonged the rescue work for three hours in a delicate operation in which a small crack could have caused a landslide.

The type of soil in the area, characterised by a mixture of sand and unstable rock, made the rescue operation difficult from the outset. In fact, excavation had to be suspended several times in the last four days to avoid a landslide. If a landslide had occurred, the rescue of Rayan would have been impossible. 

The 80-hour operation is now entering its final phase and rescuers remain hopeful of finding him alive. Authorities lowered an oxygen and water tube to the boy on Thursday, which is still in place, and lowered a camera to observe his condition and monitor his progress. In those images, Rayan appeared to be still breathing. So the operation remains hopeful.

The little boy fell into a well near the family's home on 1 February. His father claimed at the time that the surface was covered with a barrel, but that Rayan had pushed it aside. In any case, as soon as the alarm was raised, the authorities started to work.

The first option was to drill into the well down which the child fell. An unsuccessful attempt led the authorities to drill a parallel well and then approach Rayan's location. A similar operation to that deployed by the firefighters of the Provincial Consortium of Malaga to rescue Julen. In fact, the corps has offered to Morocco to support the rescue work.

The head of the rescue monitoring and surveillance committee, Abdelhadi Tamrani, told the media in statements reported by the EFE news agency that the operation is made up of eleven people, from drilling experts to Civil Protection personnel and topographers, who are working from inside the horizontal tunnel dug to reach the child.

A Royal Gendarmerie helicopter has been on standby since Saturday, in case it is necessary to transfer Rayan, as well as an ambulance in which the child's parents are already inside. In this regard, the Minister of Equipment, Transport and Logistics, Nizar Baraka, said in a statement issued in his capacity as secretary general of the Istiqlal (Independence Party) that the authorities are using "all resources and means" to carry out the operation.

Social networks have been flooded with messages with the hashtag #SaveRayan, and thousands of users have shared images of the little boy. Morocco has thrown itself into the case and half the world is following the evolution of the rescue. In addition, the operation has been forced to deploy a security cordon in the area, necessary to keep the hundreds of people who have approached the well in the last few hours.