A 10-year-old boy who fell into a deep and narrow hole at a construction site on New Year’s Eve in Vietnam has been pronounced dead by authorities.
Rescuers spent nearly 100 hours trying to free Ly Hao Nam from the 35-meter (115-foot) long support pillar driven into the ground, but without success, online newspaper VnExpress cited a local government official as saying.
“The authorities have determined that the victim has died and are trying to recover his body for the funeral,” Doan Tan Buu, deputy chairman of the southern province of Dong Thap, was quoted as saying.
The boy, Ly Hao Nam, had been searching for scrap metal with friends when he fell on the morning of Dec. 31 into a shaft at a bridge construction site in the Mekong Delta province of Dong Thap. The hollow shaft was a support pillar for the bridge.
The boy was heard crying for help shortly after he fell into the shaft.
Rescue workers had pumped oxygen into the pillar and also softened the soil around it to try to pull the pillar up to save the boy. But the pillar tilted slightly, making rescue or recovery efforts complicated.
State broadcaster VTV reported that rescuers were digging 35 meters deep around the concrete pillar to reach the boy, adding that the space was so tight that even a rope would not fit around him.
Earlier on Wednesday, Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh had urged the rescuers and local authorities to mobilize all equipment and forces needed, the government said.
Reuters contributed to this report.