Morocco prepared Monday to bury “little Rayan”, the five-year-old boy who died trapped in a well despite a days-long rescue operation that gripped the world.
His funeral is to be held in his home village of Ighrane, in the impoverished Rif mountains of northern Morocco where the tragedy took place, a local official and a relative told AFP.
The death of 5-year-old Rayan Awram in spite of a massive effort to rescue him from a deep well sparked an outpouring of sympathy on Sunday, from his village in northern Morocco to the Vatican, from King Mohammed to international football clubs.
The saga of the ultimately failed rescue attempt gripped the country and many people abroad for days.
Rayan fell into the well in Ighrane village near the town of Chefchaouen on Tuesday and his body was finally pulled out late on Saturday, following an operation that involved cutting much of the adjacent hillside and then tunneling toward the bottom of the well to reach the child.
Many of the weary rescue workers and the hundreds of people who had gathered around the well hoping for good news burst into tears when they heard Rayan was dead.
“I heard people shout in jubilation after the boy was found thinking he was alive but then we learned he was not. I never felt this sad,” an onlooker called Noureddine told Reuters.
The boy’s parents spoke to state Al Oula TV after their son’s body was recovered.
“This is God’s will. I thank all for their efforts to help,” Rayan’s mother Ouassima Kharchich said, her voice strained with grief and barely audible.
“We thank so much the people and authorities… who helped us,” the father, Khalid Awram, said.
King Mohammed expressed condolences to the parents in a phone call on Saturday night, a palace statement said.
Well-wishers also traveled to the village on Sunday to offer condolences to the family.
“We feel that people are sorry, we are all sorry. We have no other choice.
“The father, the mother, the grandmothers and uncles.
”May God give us patience,” an uncle of the child, Mohammed Kharshish, told Reuters TV on Sunday.
Pope Francis praised the people of Morocco for coming together to try to rescue the boy.
“The people clung together, as a whole, to save Rayan, they worked together to save a child,” the pope said during his weekly blessing in St. Peter’s Square. “(The rescuers) tried their best, unfortunately, they did not make it,” he said.
French President Emmanuel Macron said he felt the pain of Rayan’s family and of Moroccans.
Soccer clubs including Liverpool FC, Manchester United, FC Barcelona and FC Sevilla also expressed condolences on their Arabic Twitter accounts.
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