The country and the international community are in shock after the death of little Rayan

Morocco was in shock on Sunday, the day after the discovery of the lifeless body of little Rayan, who accidentally fell into a well earlier this week, and was found dead despite five days of relentless efforts by rescuers, followed around the world. A sign of the strong emotion caused by the tragedy, it was the royal cabinet which announced the death of the five-year-old child on Saturday evening. “Following the tragic accident that claimed the life of the child Rayan Oram, His Majesty King Mohammed VI called the parents of the deceased, who died after falling into a well,” he said in a statement.

The race against the clock carried out for five days by the rescuers had been followed live by many Internet users, and on Saturday evening, tributes poured in on social networks from all over the world, from the Maghreb to Iraq, in Yemen, France or the United States, in all languages. “Rayan’s courage will be remembered and will continue to inspire us. The dedication of the Moroccan people and the rescue workers as well,” wrote AC Milan’s Algerian international Ismaël Bennacer, in a tweet accompanied by a drawing of a child rising in the sky hanging from a heart-shaped balloon in the colors of Morocco. Morocco.

The international community shaken

“We had all kept hope that little Rayan would come out of it. All this is so tragic”, also reacted on Twitter the Moroccan-American novelist Laila Lalami, while French President Emmanuel Macron said on Facebook “to the family of little Rayan and to the Moroccan people that we share their pain”.

It took five days for rescuers to reach the child because they first had to drill a huge deep crevice and then a horizontal tunnel. Rayan had accidentally fallen into the 32-meter dry well, narrow and difficult to access, dug near the family residence in the village of Ighrane, in the province of Chefchaouen, in the north of the kingdom. Entering a horizontal breach on Saturday afternoon, the rescuers had continued their work centimeter by centimeter, digging by hand to avoid any landslide.

The sad memory of Julen

The date of the funeral has not been announced by the family, but according to Muslim tradition it should take place quickly, in principle on Sunday. This accident echoes a tragedy that occurred in early 2019 in Andalusia (Spain), where two-year-old Julen died after falling into a well 25 centimeters in diameter and more than 100 meters deep. His body was found after 13 days of research on an exceptional scale.