Widespread sympathy for the tragedy of Iraqi child Hajar

In a tragedy that shook Iraq, four-year-old Hajar died shortly after being rescued from a deep well in the Al-Kawr area of Nineveh province, southeast of Mosul, bringing an end to a rescue operation that lasted about five hours and drew widespread attention and engagement across the country. The child fell into a well approximately 20 meters deep and remained inside for hours. Civil defense teams in Nineveh confirmed she was alive and continued their efforts to reach and extract her. Specialized teams from Nineveh and Erbil participated in the rescue operation after two previous attempts to reach the child failed due to the well’s depth, before joint teams finally succeeded in pulling her out after hours of intensive efforts. The Directorate of Civil Defense announced the success of the rescue operation, stating that federal civil defense teams, supported and coordinated with civil defense personnel in the Kurdistan Region – Erbil, managed to extract the child from the well and provided necessary first aid before transferring her to a hospital in Erbil. However, the tragedy did not end with her rescue; the Erbil Health Directorate announced that Hajar died upon arrival at the hospital, noting that she arrived in critical condition and succumbed to complications resulting from her fall into the well, despite rescue and medical efforts. Her body was transferred to the Forensic Medicine Directorate to determine the exact cause of death, according to the Erbil Health Directorate. The tragedy of Hajar recalls similar incidents, including that of Algerian child Ayoub, whom the Algerian Civil Protection announced it had recovered deceased from a well on September 5, as well as the tragedy of Moroccan child Ryan, who died in 2022 after falling into a deep well.