The boy had been trapped at a depth of 32 meters since Tuesday afternoon.
Helpers were able to get little Rayan (5) out of the well shaft – but the boy died just a few minutes later.
At 9:33 p.m., they carried the boy out of the pit on a stretcher and took him to an ambulance. The 5-year-old died just a few minutes later, according to the Moroccan royal palace.
King Mohammed VI I expressed my condolences to the parents in a telephone call, it said in a statement from the royal family on Saturday evening.
Rayan fell into the 32 meter deep hole near the village of Bab Berred in the province of Chefchaouen on Tuesday. The accident happened “in a moment of inattention”, Rayan’s father described in local media. He just wanted to repair the well.
Since then, the rescuers had worked tirelessly to rescue Rayan. First, they slowly lowered a camera to look for the boy. When they discovered he was alive and believed to have only a minor head injury, they lowered water and food to him.
Boulders obstructed path to boy
Since Friday evening, helpers have been digging a horizontal tunnel at a depth of around 32 meters in order to reach Rayan via a hole dug parallel to the well. Local media reported that a boulder blocked the path to the boy and had delayed work for several hours.
The rescue workers built concrete pipes in the horizontal tunnel to stabilize the earth. On Friday evening, the helpers had to interrupt the action because of a landslide.
The rescue took the whole of Saturday. The final layers of rock were carefully and slowly removed to avoid burial from the vibrations. At the time, nothing was known about the condition of the boy.
Around the world, people with the family had feared for the five-year-old. Despite the freezing cold, thousands of people gathered near the scene of the accident in a village around 150 kilometers north of the city of Fez to witness the action.