Fourth day in the well: Rescuers change strategy to save 10-year-old Ayoub

For four days, rescuers in El Ghassoul have been trying to reach 10-year-old Ayoub at the bottom of a dry artesian well in Algeria’s El Bayadh province. On Saturday, specialized Civil Protection teams descended into a parallel well dug close to the cavity where the boy is trapped, seeking to determine his exact location and prepare an evacuation route.

Ayoub fell when he accidentally stepped on an old plywood board covering the opening of a traditional well. The board gave way beneath him, sending him into a shaft about 80 meters deep and no more than 40 centimeters wide.

Initial assessments found that roughly 30 meters of the well had filled with earth. That made a direct attempt to reach the child extremely dangerous. Lieutenant Colonel Nassim Bernaoui, deputy director of information and public awareness at the Civil Protection service, said the child was at considerable depth and covered by a substantial amount of soil, ruling out direct extraction from the outset.

The well also has no metal casing to support its walls, while its underground passage is not straight. Its winding, irregular route makes it difficult to locate Ayoub precisely and prevents rescuers from safely drilling vertically without the bore deviating.

Rescue teams therefore redirected the operation toward a parallel shaft. They plan to descend to the same depth and then create a secured horizontal connection to the cavity. Progress has been slowed by the geology, however, as heavy machinery encountered extremely hard rock and solid layers during the early drilling stages.

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From the first attempts, our teams found that the child was at a considerable depth and covered by a substantial amount of earth. This immediately ruled out the possibility of direct extraction.