Five-year-old Afghan boy trapped in well three days dies minutes after being pulled out alive

A five-year-old boy trapped for three days down a well in a remote Afghan village died minutes after being pulled out alive, officials said Friday.

The child, named Haidar, slipped to the bottom of a well being dug Tuesday in Shokak, a parched village in Zabul province around 250 miles southwest of the capital of Kabul.

"With great sorrow, young Haidar is separated from us forever," said Taliban interior ministry senior adviser Anas Haqqani, in a tweet echoed by several of his colleagues.

Zabul police spokesman Zabiullah Jawhar told AFP that Haidar was clinging to life when rescuers reached him.

"In the first minutes after the rescue operation was completed he was breathing, and the medical team gave him oxygen," he said.

"When the medical team tried to carry him to the helicopter, he lost his life."

The operation came around two weeks after a similar attempt to rescue a boy from a Moroccan well gripped the world -- but ended with the child found dead.

Haidar's grandfather, 50-year-old Haji Abdul Hadi told AFP the boy fell down the well when he was trying to "help" adults dig a new borehole in the drought-ravaged village.

Officials said he slipped to the bottom of the narrow 80-foot shaft and was pulled by rope to about 33 feet before becoming stuck.

Senior officials from the Taliban's newly installed government oversaw the rescue operation, which was watched by hundreds of curious villagers.

Some Taliban officials posted videos of the tricky operation, saying it was an example of how the new regime -- widely criticized for rights abuses -- would spare nothing to care for citizens.

Video shared Thursday on social media showed the boy wedged in the well but able to move his arms and upper body.

"Are you OK, my son?" his father can be heard saying. "Talk with me and don't cry, we are working to get you out."

"OK. I'll keep talking," the boy replies in a plaintive voice.

The video was obtained by rescuers lowering a light and a camera down the well by rope.

Engineers using bulldozers dug an open slit trench from an angle at the surface to reach the point where Haidar was trapped.

A large rock blocked the final few feet, which workers used pickaxes to break on Friday morning.

The operation employed similar engineering to what rescuers attempted in Morocco in early February, when a boy fell down a 105-foot well but was pulled out dead five days later.

The ordeal of "little Rayan" gained global attention and sparked an outpouring of sympathy online, with the Arabic Twitter hashtag #SaveRayan trending.