Afghanistan: Six-Year-Old Boy Rescued From Well Dies

 

A boy who was trapped in an Afghanistan well for four days has died.

Rescuers had managed to pull out the six-year-old boy named Haider on Friday afternoon after working round the clock to rescue him.

But a local journalist told the BBC that the boy was unresponsive and not breathing when he was pulled out of the well in the southern Zabul province.

Rescuers had reported that there had been no sound coming out of the well since Thursday.

The rescue team had dug a trench into the ground to reach the boy. He was meant to be flown via helicopter to a hospital in Kabul for urgent medical treatment.

"In the first minutes after the rescue operation was completed he was breathing, and the medical team gave him oxygen," Zabul police spokesman Zabiullah Jawhar told AFP. "When the medical team tried to carry him to the helicopter, he lost his life."

Haider had been trapped in the well in the village of Shokak after falling off a road on Tuesday, an official from Zabul's information and culture department told BBC Pashto.

The child had initially slipped to the bottom of the narrow 25-metre (80-foot) shaft, where he was able to move around. But desperate attempts to save him by some onlookers who attempted to pull him up with a rope, made the situation worse.

After pulling him up to about 10m (32ft) from the shaft's opening, the boy got stuck as the passage was too narrow. He was suspended like that for more than 30 hours before rescuers finally managed to reach him. In that position, rescuers were also unable to deliver food and water to him.

"Are you okay my son?" his father was heard saying in video footage that was captured and shared on social media. "Talk with me and don't cry, we are working to get you out."

"Okay, I'll keep talking," the boy had replied.

However, 24 hours before they pulled him out, the child had stopped communicating altogether.

"With great sorrow, young Haidar is separated from us forever," Taliban interior ministry senior adviser Anas Haqqani tweeted shortly after.

The news comes less than two weeks after a boy died in Morocco after getting trapped in a well for four days.

- bbc.com