Kabul, Feb 18 (Agency) A young boy has been trapped in a well in Afghanistan for over 48 hours and he is unable to move his arms and upper body, media reports said. He is trapped about 10m down the shaft, which is thought to be around 25m deep. He is believed to have fallen into the well in the remote southern Afghan village while helping adults dig a borehole. Rescuers are desperately scrambling to reach the boy trapped in the village some 120 km northeast of Kandahar. As the clock ticks towards 72 hours, the chances of his survival grows dim. The accident comes less than two weeks after a similar attempt to rescue a child in Morocco failed.
Taliban officials said the boy slipped to the bottom of the 25-metre shaft but was pulled to about 10 metres before becoming stuck. A video on social media showed Haider stuck inside the well in Shokak village of Zabul province, reported the BBC. The video was obtained by rescuers by lowering a light and a camera down the narrow well by rope. “Are you okay my son? Talk with me and don’t cry, we are working to get you out,” his father could be heard saying. “Okay, I’ll keep talking,” the boy replied. Haider fell in the well off a road on Tuesday. Rescue operation started that very night with rescuers and technical machines rushed to the scene from neighboring Kandahar province. The boy’s age is not confirmed, some say he is five, while others seven. Engineers using bulldozers have dug an open slit trench from an angle at the surface to try to reach the point where Haidar is trapped, the Guardian reported.
The boy’s grandfather, Haji Abdul Hadi, said Haidar fell down the well when he was trying to help the adults dig a new borehole in the drought-ravaged village. “I said, ‘no, not him’,” Hadi said. “One of the wells was open … (then) the boy fell down. He was yelling and yelling,” the Guardian quoted the grandfather as saying. Hadi added that food and water were passed down to his grandson via a bucket attached to a rope. “We gave him cake and water … he was eating them all,” he said. The operation employed similar engineering to what rescuers attempted in Morocco in early February, when Rayan Oram fell down a 32-metre well, but was found dead five days later.