‘Little Rayan’ dies before rescue
Morocco was in shock yesterday after emergency crews found a five-year-old boy dead at the bottom of a well in a tragic end to a painstaking five-day rescue operation that gripped the nation and the world.
The ordeal of "little Rayan" since he fell down the well on Tuesday afternoon gained global attention and sparked an outpouring of sympathy online, with the Arabic hashtag #SaveRayan trending.
Throughout the operation to extricate him from the bottom of the 32-metre (100-foot) well shaft, authorities had cautioned that they did not know whether he was alive.
And reflecting the emotions provoked by the drama, it was Morocco's royal cabinet that announced he had been found dead.
Tributes poured in in the wake of the news that the rescue efforts had failed to recover Rayan alive.
"I want to say to the family of little Rayan and to the Moroccan people that we share your pain," French President Emmanuel Macron said on Facebook.
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