Morocco Buries Little Rayan Who Died Trapped in Well

Mourners gather during the funeral of five-year-old Rayan Awram, who died after being trapped for days in a well. (Reuters)
Mourners gather during the funeral of five-year-old Rayan Awram, who died after being trapped for days in a well. (Reuters)
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Morocco Buries Little Rayan Who Died Trapped in Well

Mourners gather during the funeral of five-year-old Rayan Awram, who died after being trapped for days in a well. (Reuters)
Mourners gather during the funeral of five-year-old Rayan Awram, who died after being trapped for days in a well. (Reuters)

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-meter (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 cemetery near his village, where hundreds of mourners attended his funeral, AFP journalists said.

Nation in shock

Rayan's father Khaled Aourram said he had been repairing the well when his son fell in, close to the family home.

The shaft, just 45 centimeters (18 inches) across, was too narrow for Rayan to be reached directly, and widening it was deemed too risky -- so earth movers dug a wide slope into the hill.

Rescue crews, using bulldozers and front-end loaders, excavated the surrounding red earth down to the level where the boy was trapped, before drill teams carefully dug a horizontal tunnel to reach him from the side to avoid causing a landslide.

Vast crowds came to offer their support, singing and praying to encourage the rescuers who worked around the clock.

But the boy's death left Moroccans in shock.

Mourad Fazoui in Rabat mourned what he said was a disaster. "May his soul rest in peace and may God open the gates of heaven to him," the salesman said.

Social media across the Arab world were flooded with messages of support, grief, and praise for rescue workers.

"He has brought people together around him," one Twitter user said.

But one deplored a "dystopian world" where "Arab nations are moved" by the Morocco rescue operation for the child while vast numbers of infants die in conflict or famine in Yemen and Syria.



UN: Lifelines Keeping People Alive in Gaza Are Collapsing

21 July 2025, Palestinian Territories, Gaza: Mourners pray near the bodies of Palestinians killed in overnight Israeli strikes, according to medics, during the funeral at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. Photo: Omar Ashtawy/APA Images via ZUMA Press Wire/dpa
21 July 2025, Palestinian Territories, Gaza: Mourners pray near the bodies of Palestinians killed in overnight Israeli strikes, according to medics, during the funeral at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. Photo: Omar Ashtawy/APA Images via ZUMA Press Wire/dpa
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UN: Lifelines Keeping People Alive in Gaza Are Collapsing

21 July 2025, Palestinian Territories, Gaza: Mourners pray near the bodies of Palestinians killed in overnight Israeli strikes, according to medics, during the funeral at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. Photo: Omar Ashtawy/APA Images via ZUMA Press Wire/dpa
21 July 2025, Palestinian Territories, Gaza: Mourners pray near the bodies of Palestinians killed in overnight Israeli strikes, according to medics, during the funeral at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. Photo: Omar Ashtawy/APA Images via ZUMA Press Wire/dpa

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is appalled by an accelerating breakdown of humanitarian conditions in Gaza "where the last lifelines keeping people alive are collapsing," his spokesperson said on Monday.

"He deplores the growing reports of children and adults suffering from malnutrition," UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said.

"Israel has the obligation to allow and facilitate by all the means at its disposal the humanitarian relief provided by the United Nations and by other humanitarian organizations."

Israeli ground troops for the first time Monday pushed into areas of a central Gaza city where several aid groups are based, in what appeared to be the latest effort to carve up the Palestinian territory with military corridors.

Deir al-Balah is the only Gaza city that has not seen major ground operations or suffered widespread devastation in 21 months of war, leading to speculation that the Hamas militant group holds large numbers of hostages there. The main group representing hostages’ families said it was “shocked and alarmed” by the incursion, which was confirmed by an Israeli military official, and demanded answers from Israeli leaders.

Israel says the seizure of territory in Gaza is aimed at pressuring Hamas to release hostages, but it is a major point of contention in ongoing ceasefire talks.

The UN food agency, meanwhile, accused Israeli forces of firing on a crowd of Palestinians seeking humanitarian aid over the weekend. Gaza's Health Ministry called it one of the deadliest attacks on aid-seekers in the war that has driven the territory to the brink of famine.