The body of a 5-year-old Moroccan boy trapped in a dry, 104-foot well for more than four days was pulled out Saturday after a painstaking but ultimately unsuccessful rescue effort that transfixed the world.

Thunderous cheers, applause and prayers erupted from hundreds of onlookers as medics carried the boy, Rayan Oram, on a red stretcher through a cordon of Moroccan police and soldiers to a waiting ambulance. His parents were waiting nearby.

But minutes after the dramatic extraction, the royal palace said in a statement to state media that the boy had died before rescuers could save him. Moroccan King Mohammed VI called to offer his condolences to the parents, Khaled Oram and Wassima Kharchich.

The palace said the king closely followed the rescue efforts, “instructing officials to use all means necessary to dig the boy out of the well and return him alive to his parents.” Mohammed hailed the rescuers for their relentless work and the community for its support of Rayan’s family.

Earlier, rescuers had warned that they were unable to determine the boy’s condition while they worked to get him out.

News of Rayan’s death was heartbreaking, not only for the parents, the rescuers who labored for days and the crowd at the scene, but also for millions around the world who were engrossed by the tense drama that was live streamed from the small northern Morocco village of Ighran.

It was unclear exactly when Rayan died. Images taken with a camera sent down the shaft earlier in the week showed Rayan breathing heavily, with blood on his face. Rescue workers also lowered food and water to the child during the days it took to dig him out, but it was not known if he was able to eat or drink while he was underground.

The rescue crews needed days of round-the-clock effort to reach the boy, who fell down the shaft Tuesday while his father was working on the well. Attempts to retrieve him the way he fell in were unsuccessful because the shaft, roughly 18 inches wide at ground level, narrowed to about 8 inches about 75 feet down, and took a turn near the bottom.

Bulldozers were brought in to dig out much of the hillside next to the well, creating a huge trench parallel to the shaft. Workers then had to dig a horizontal tunnel through the rocky, sandy soil to connect the shaft where the child was stuck and extract him. The meticulous work was repeatedly slowed by heavy rocks and the fear of landslides, including one section of hard rock that took about five hours to clear, the head of the rescue committee, Abdelhadi Temrani, told local media.

The final hours of the delicate operation required the workers to dig very slowly and by hand to avoid a collapse that could have buried the child. One engineer told a local television channel that they were digging just 20 centimeters, or about 7 inches, per hour.

The village of about 500 people in Morocco’s Rif Mountains is dotted with deep wells, most of which have protective covers. They are often used to irrigate the cannabis crop that provides a key source of income for many in the poor, arid region.

With Post wires.