Two weeks after a 5-year-old boy died after falling into a well in Morocco, another 5-year-old has died in a very similar tragedy in Afghanistan. Officials say Haidar, who fell down a shaft while trying to "help" adults dig a new borehole in a drought-stricken village Tuesday, was alive when he was rescued Friday but died within minutes. "In the first minutes after the rescue operation was completed he was breathing, and the medical team gave him oxygen," Zabiullah Jawhar, a spokesman for police in Zabul province, tells AFP. "When the medical team tried to carry him to the helicopter, he lost his life." Officials said that after Haider fell to the bottom of the 80-foot hole, he was pulled up by rope to around 33 feet, where he became wedged but still able to move his arms.
Rescuers overseen by senior Taliban officials worked nonstop for days to try to rescue the boy, using similar methods to those used in the Moroccan effort, Al Jazeera reports. They dug an open slit trench at an angle from the surface to try to reach the point where Haidar was stuck, but the operation was slowed down early Friday after they encountered a boulder. "We are concerned that dust could fall on the boy, and probably we would lose him, so we are working carefully," Jawhar said at that point. After the boy's death, an interior ministry official tweeted: "With great sorrow, young Haidar is separated from us forever." (More Afghanistan stories.)
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