Algerian rescue teams recover the body of a child who fell into an artesian well
The Algerian Civil Protection announced on Saturday that rescue teams had found the body of Ayoub, a 10-year-old boy, after exhausting efforts to extract him from a dry artesian well into which he had fallen four days earlier in the Bechar province in the southwest of the country.
The boy’s fall into the well sparked widespread attention and sympathy in Algeria, with his name becoming a trending hashtag that spread rapidly across social media platforms.
Following days of search operations, the Civil Protection issued a statement saying, “In accordance with the rescue operation for a child who fell into a dry artesian well in the location known as Rukna Village, Ghsoul Municipality, Bechar Province, the child’s location was identified and he was recovered deceased. May God have mercy on him.”
It added, “The Civil Protection, together with local authorities and all governmental and private entities, deployed all available human and material resources for this operation.”
Earlier, Colonel Nessim Bernawi of the Civil Protection had anticipated the announcement of the boy’s recovery, emphasizing that the chances of finding him alive were “very slim, given the amount of time he spent buried under soil without oxygen.”
The Civil Protection had previously stated that it faced difficulties in reaching the boy because he was trapped beneath a thick layer of earth, noting that “the well was dug using traditional methods and filled with soil to a depth of 30 meters, without a casing pipe, and its diameter does not exceed 40 centimeters.”
The boy fell into the well on Wednesday after passing over it, which had been covered with a wooden board, at a short distance from his family’s home in the desert village of Rukna, near Brezina, approximately 550 kilometers southwest of the capital.
Images released by the Civil Protection and local media showed large excavators digging a parallel shaft opposite the well to reach the boy horizontally. They also excavated a second well adjacent to the original one to follow its path.
The incident triggered widespread sympathy and extensive engagement across social media platforms in Algeria and abroad, with continuous monitoring of the rescue operations.
