Workers retrieved the body of a young boy,Rayan who was trapped for five days in a well in northern Morocco, a devastating end to a painstaking operation that gripped the nation.
The royal palace said in a statement carried by state media on Saturday that the boy had died before rescuers could save him.
expressed his condolences to the boy’s parents.
“Following the tragic accident which cost the life of the child Rayan Oram, His Majesty King Mohammed VI called the parents of the boy who died after falling down the well,” the statement said.
An Associated Press reporter at the scene saw the boy wrapped in a yellow blanket after he was carried out from a tunnel dug specifically for the rescue.
His parents had been escorted to an ambulance before the body emerged. The ambulance reversed into the deep cut that rescue teams had excavated and took away the body.
The boy’s plight captured worldwide attention. Online messages of support and concern for Rayan poured in from around the world as the rescue efforts dragged on.
Footage posted on social media showed the scene after his body was recovered, with hundreds of distraught rescue workers and onlookers gathered at the site chanting and shining the flashlights of their phones into the air.