Boy stuck inside washing machine freed in Medina

Cairo: A boy was freed after he had got stuck into a washing machine in the Saudi holy city of Medina, the Saudi civil defence has reported.

“The civil defence in Medina Al Munawarah freed the child. He is in good health,” the Saudi Directorate of Civil Defence said on its X account.

“This came within the context of quick response efforts made by the directorate to different reports and addressing them in a record time,” the service added without giving further details about circumstances of the incident.

The directorate posted a photo of efforts to untangle the boy from the machine. The child’s age was not given.

In recent months, Saudi media carried reports about incidents involving children in the kingdom.

Earlier this year, surgeons at a hospital in Saudi Arabia removed a magnetic chain from a boy’s abdomen where it had reportedly settled there for around three years.

The metal item was successfully extricated in a three-hour operation.

A medical team at the hospital had initially detected an odd ring inside the intestines of the 10-year-old boy after carrying out clinical tests for him, Sabq news website reported in January, citing a medical complex in the holy city of Mecca.

The boy had had been admitted into the hospital’s emergency department with severe pains in the abdomen and chronic constipation. Imagining showed there was a four-piece magnetic chain that the boy had swallowed three years earlier and settled inside the stomach and intestines, the report said.

The item was pulled out through an endoscopy.

Medical professionals have warned against overlooking children’s playing with magnetic toys, saying they are among the most lethal items potentially swallowed by kids due to their dangerous consequences that usually necessitate medical intervention.