Saudi Arabia: Indian dies after trapped into 140m-deep well in Medina

Cairo: Saudi Civil Defence authorities said they recovered the body of an Indian expatriate who had fallen into a 140-metre-deep well in Medina.

The 35 centimetre-diametre well is located at a rest house near a road in the city.

The civil defence said its teams in Medina had tackled the incident in an attempt to save the trapped man, but he was later hauled up dead.

“A field command centre was set up, supported by human teams and rescue equipment to save the man trapped inside the well,” a spokesman for the city’s civil defence said.

Cameras were used to monitor his condition while oxygen was supplied through the crate as rescuers embarked on digging up a parallel well to the one where the man was trapped.

The work continued for 27 hours despite the inhospitable terrain, the spokesman added in a statement.

Saudi news website Akhbar24 quoted unidentified sources as saying that civil defence teams had dug 10 metres deep next to the well until they reached a place parallel to where the expatriate’s body was and managed to retrieve it. Neither the victim’s age nor job was revealed.

There was no immediate word on the circumstances surrounding the incident.

Saudi authorities have stepped up a campaign to backfill abandoned wells following the 2022 death in Morocco of a five-year-old boy who was trapped in a well for five days, an incident that grabbed global attention.