Moroccans on Monday attended the funeral of Rayan, a five-year-old boy who spent five days trapped down a well, sparking a vast rescue operation that gripped the world but ended in tragedy.
The boy had fallen down a narrow, 32-metre (100-foot) dry well last
Tuesday, sparking a complex earth-moving operation to try to reach him
without triggering a landslide.
Well-wishers had flooded social media with messages of sympathy and
prayers that he would be brought out alive, but their hopes were dashed.
On Saturday night, crowds had cheered as rescue workers cleared away
the final handfuls of soil to reach him, after the marathon digging
operation in the village of Ighrane in northern Morocco’s impoverished
Rif mountains.
But the joy turned to grief when the royal cabinet of the North African
nation announced that the boy was dead.
King Mohammed VI called the parents to voice his condolences.
The child’s body was taken to a military hospital in the capital Rabat,
accompanied by his parents.
On Monday it was transported to the Douar Zaouia cemetary near his
village, where hundreds of mourners attended his funeral, AFP
journalists said.
