Eerie silence falls on Ighran, a village in a mountainous area in northern Morocco, after the death of a five-year-old Rayan Awram who had been trapped in a well for four days
Pope Francis, while mourning the loss of Rayan, praised the "beautiful" sight of "how all the people gathered together" to try to save a child.
Throughout the major digging operation to extricate Rayan, authorities had cautioned that they did not know whether he was alive. Late on Saturday evening, crowds cheered when the rescue workers broke through the final stretch of earth to reach the boy, and volunteer digger Ali Sahraoui cleared the last soil away with his hands.But soon after, AFP correspondents saw the boy's parents walk down the slope into the horizontal tunnel, visibly crushed. They returned and boarded an ambulance without saying a word.