Madrid: Diggers trying to reach a two-year-old boy who fell into a deep well in southern Spain a week ago saw their progress slowed by harder rock on Sunday, though experts still held out hope he could still be alive.
There has been no contact with Julen Rosello since he fell down the narrow shaft, some 100 metres (350 feet) deep, on January 13 while playing as his parents prepared a picnic nearby in the town of Totalan near Malaga.
After abandoning an initial plan to reach the boy with an angled tunnel because of repeated collapses and landslides, workers turned to the possibility of drilling a vertical shaft parallel to the well.
But the new effort slowed as diggers hit hard granite. They have so far bored down some 40 metres, local Canal Sur television reported.
When they reach a depth of 60 metres, a team of eight expert miners will be lowered down the shaft to start digging a horizontal tunnel to the location where they believe the toddler is.
The authorities are “doing everything that is humanly possible” to rescue the boy, Juanma Moreno, president of the regional government of Andalusia, told reporters.
“But the circumstances are not helping. I hope and trust that tomorrow, Monday, we will have some positive news. But it will depend on the nature of the ground,” he added.
Spanish media, which have been covering the unprecedented rescue operations round-the-clock, have reported that Julen’s parents lost another child, aged three, in 2017. (AFP)
