The world is watching as Morrocan rescue workers work tirelessly to bring out a 5yr old boy who has been trapped in a well since Tuesday. The rescue workers on Saturday are inched closer to reaching the little boy who has been trapped in an underground well on the outskirts of the city of Chefchaouen in northern Morocco.

The horizontal digging process continues to get the child Rayan out of the well he fell into, as the authorities said that the rescue operation had entered its final and decisive phase.

As at dawn today, Saturday, the rescue crews began to use an iron tank, open on both sides, with a diameter of one and a half meters, in addition to large concrete pipes, to protect the crews from any possible rock collapse.

Since the sunset of Friday, the rescue crews began digging by hand horizontally, where they are separated by a few meters from the child Rayan (5 years), who has been stuck since Tuesday noon in a dry well 32 meters deep, in the agricultural village of Igrane in the governorate of Chefchaouen.

This stage comes after the bulldozers finished digging a slope 32 meters deep, parallel to the well in which the child was stuck.

Abdelhadi Al-Thamrani, a member of the committee set up to track the operation, told local media yesterday that the rescue teams “supplied the child with oxygen every minute and every second.”

A helicopter is on standby to take Rayan to a hospital as soon as he is rescued.

According to an Al-Jazeera correspondent; Al-Mukhtar Al-Ablawi who was at the site said that about 16 hours have passed since the start of horizontal drilling, which is carried out with hand tools and mechanisms that do not cause vibrations so as not to cause any collapse in the fragile soil.

The reporter added that more people have come to the place since the early hours of the morning, local time and that the supervisors of the operation expect to save the child within hours.

Thousands took to social media to express their solidarity for the boy and his family, with the Arabic hashtag #SaveRayan trending for hours in Morocco and North Africa.

The cold weather did not prevent thousands of residents from waiting around the well until midnight last night, as they applauded from time to time to encourage the rescue teams, including those who came from distant areas to show support.

Some supporters say they are there to help. “We’ve been here for three days. Rayan is a child of our region. We won’t leave until he’s out of the well,” one supporter told the AFP news agency.

The child’s mother told local media, “We all enlisted to search for him as soon as he disappeared (…) until we learned that he had fallen into the well.”

In turn, his father told the second Moroccan channel (governmental) yesterday, “I still have hope to see my son come out alive. I thank all the people who are working to save him and all those who support us in Morocco and abroad.”

Rayan’s mother told the media that he had been playing nearby before disappearing on Tuesday evening. “The whole family went out to look for him then we realized that he’d fallen down the well,” she said.