The king of Morocco has sent his condolences to the family of a five-year-old boy who died after spending four days trapped in a 32m deep well in the north of the country.
King Mohammed VI released a statement confirming that the little boy had died since becoming trapped in the northern hill town of Chefchaouen on Tuesday.
The palace statement said the king had been closely following the frantic rescue efforts by locals authorities, “instructing officials to use all means necessary to dig the boy out of the well and return him alive to his parents”.
The king hailed the rescuers for their relentless work and the community for lending support to Rayan’s family.
It comes after footage from the scene showed rescue workers emerging from a tunnel carrying the boy on Saturday night.
An Associated Press reporter at the scene saw the boy wrapped in a yellow blanket after he emerged from a tunnel dug specifically for the rescue.
His parents had been escorted to an ambulance before the boy, Rayan, emerged. His plight had captured worldwide attention.
After the boy’s death was confirmed, Rayan’s aunt Atiqua Awram said: “My heart is aching for him, too much.
“My nephew, my heart aches for him.
“May God be with him, just like how God stood with us.”
Online messages of support and concern using the hashtag #SaveRayan, poured in from around the world as the rescue efforts dragged through the night.
Emergency services had been digging around the clock to rescue the boy after he became trapped.
Rescuers dug a parallel hole the length of the well in an attempt to reach the boy and have also managed to send a CCTV camera down in order to communicate with the child publicly identified by his first name, Rayan.
Rescuers delicately tried to remove rocks as they dug horizontally towards the young boy, a dangerous operation constantly imperilled by the threat of landslides.
“I ask Moroccans to pray for the safe return of my son,” Rayan’s distraught mother, Wassima Kharchich, had previously told local media.
“I pray and beg God that he comes out of that well alive and safe. Please God, ease my pain and his, in that hole of dust.”
The boy’s father, Khalid Agoram, said he had spent hours searching for his son Rayan on Tuesday before realising he had fallen down the well.
The well is 32 metres deep and narrows as it descends from its 45cm (18 inches) diameter at the top, which means the rescuers were unable to go down themselves to retrieve the child.
Rayan fell into the well outside his home in the village of Ighran in Morocco’s mountainous northern Chefchaouen province.
He was trapped in a hole too narrow for rescuers to reach safely.
For three days, search crews used bulldozers to dig a parallel ditch. Then on Friday, they started excavating a horizontal tunnel to reach the trapped boy.
His distraught parents were joined by hundreds of villagers and others who gathered to watch the rescue operation.
The village of about 500 people is dotted with deep wells, many used for irrigating the cannabis crop that is the main source of income for many in the poor, remote and arid region of Morocco’s Rif Mountains.
Most of the wells have protective covers.
