All of Morocco is in a state of “shock” after learning of the death of little Rayan , the 5-year-old boy who spent more than a hundred hours trapped at the bottom of a 32-meter deep well.
A few minutes after the boy’s body was removed from the bottom of the well at 9:30 p.m., the Royal Cabinet reported Rayan’s death in a statement.
According to the note, published by the official Moroccan agency MAP, King Mohamed VI had a telephone conversation with the child’s parents, Khaled Aouran and Uassima Jarchichde, to offer their condolences.
The monarch expressed his condolences to the family of the deceased “in this painful experience,” the note reads.
As soon as the news of his death was known, social networks were filled with photos of the little boy and messages of affection and condolences addressed to his family.
Rayan’s case has kept the whole of Morocco and the rest of the world on edge. Many expected the “miracle” of being able to get Rayan out alive, despite the complexity of the rescue device and the child’s state of health, who was without food or water for five days, although with the oxygen that the troops tried to supply him. at all times.
Authorities have not yet released details about the circumstances of the boy’s death.
A DELICATE RESCUE
Rayan ‘s rescue turned out to be more painful than initially anticipated . The clayey ground, especially fragile, and the stones found on the way have slowed down the task, to the point that it has taken almost four days to reach it.
It has been done by first excavating a huge vertical gap 32 meters deep next to the well on the hill where the little boy’s house is located. Once that level was reached, at the height of the bottom of the hole, a horizontal tunnel was drilled to the cavity where Rayan was.
A team with a stretcher heading for the tunnel raised hopes this Saturday afternoon, but two hours later there were still 80 centimeters to go, which were going to be excavated, the technicians warned, with great care not to create landslides in the final phase.
These tasks were scrutinized by the attentive gaze of dozens, sometimes hundreds, of residents of the area and foreigners who have not hesitated to travel hundreds of kilometers to see the outcome of what has become a national anthem for days: “Save Rayan.”
“I haven’t slept in three days,” explained a young man from Fez, as well as a teenager from Rayan who says he hasn’t slept a wink in that time. His uncle, he says, managed to sleep from seven to eight last night.
These neighbors have seen how a normally quiet area, made up of modest isolated houses on a mountainous terrain, has become a hubbub of cars coming and going on the roads and a mixture of authorities, locals and visitors who have created the occasional friction .
The atmosphere of those who waited for Rayan was quiet at night , with the hills populated with bonfires, people sleeping in the open under the cold and the smell of fire and gasoline; and more hectic during the day, with some clashes between the proud Rif people and their compatriots from other areas of Morocco.
After the troops left with the child’s stretcher, everyone exclaimed “Allah is great” and sang the national anthem amid applause, and one of the rescue troops was even killed. Word was still going around that the boy was alive.
As soon as the news of his death was known, a sudden silence reigned in the place, while people began to leave the area.
ARAB SOLIDARITY
From the beginning, Rayan’s case sparked a wave of solidarity on social media. Artists, politicians and athletes from around the world sent messages of solidarity with the boy’s family.
It is essentially in the Arab world that all stages of the rescue operation were fervently followed. Al Jazeera Mubasher, the Qatari channel most followed by Arabs, maintained a “streaming” during the past three days, with a rain of calls from citizens from different Arab countries, all pending the boy Rayan.
Mothers and fathers from different parts of the world called shocked crying, all with a single message: “Rayan was not the son of his parents but of the entire Arab world.”
Those who had the greatest interaction with the Rayan case were the Algerians . Despite the diplomatic conflict between the two neighbors, their towns were united by Rayan.