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The five-year-old child who died after falling into a well in the northern Moroccan village of Ighrane will be buried on Monday. The rescue attempts and the announcement of his death this weekend had aroused great emotion around the world.
After the shock and emotion that accompanied his tragic death, Morocco is preparing to bury little Rayan, stuck for five days at the bottom of a well in a poor region in the north of the kingdom, a drama that held the world in suspense.
The child's funeral is scheduled for Monday, February 7 in the village of Ighrane (north), where the tragedy unfolded, a cousin of the child and a deputy from the province of Chefchaouen told AFP. Abderrahim Bouazza.
No official information has filtered on a possible autopsy. The body of the 5-year-old boy was transported to the military hospital in Rabat.
Rayan's death triggered considerable emotion, amplified by social networks, in Morocco and around the world.
“The silence is terrible this (Sunday) morning in the village. Everyone was praying that he would come out alive. Everyone cried,” a relative of the family told AFP.
“The fall of a child reminded the world of the values of humanity,” commented the public television site SNRT on Sunday.
Abroad, Pope Francis greeted "a whole (Moroccan) people who came together to save Rayan", during the Angelus prayer celebrated in the Vatican. “They tried everything, unfortunately he didn't survive. But what an example. Thank you to these people for this testimony,” Francis said.
Sign of the wave of sympathy caused by the tragedy, it was the royal cabinet which announced, Saturday evening, the death of the child. King Mohammed VI himself called Rayan's parents to offer his condolences, and they thanked, moved, the sovereign, the authorities and all the rescuers.
Strenuous efforts of rescuers
Work began on Sunday to fill the relief tunnels drilled by the rescuers as well as the well, according to AFP journalists on the spot.
Moroccans were still in shock. "It's a disaster, let's hope (Rayan's) soul rests in peace. We wish his parents and all his family patience and comfort,” summed up a resident of Rabat. All paid tribute to the tireless efforts of the rescuers. Their race against the clock was followed live by countless Internet users.
And as soon as the death was announced, tributes on social networks poured in from all over the world, from neighboring and rival Algeria to France or the United States, in all languages. “Little angel, you fought until the end, a hero”, greeted a surfer on Twitter. “He will have succeeded where leaders and the media have failed. He brought people together around him,” opined another internet user.
A dissonant voice lamented a "dystopian world in which all Arab nations are moved by the rescue of a child in Morocco while dozens die every day of starvation or bombardment in Yemen, Syria", before adding : “NB: All lives matter”.
Rayan had accidentally fallen on February 1 into a 32-meter dry well, narrow and difficult to access, dug near the family home in Ighrane.
With AFP
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