Rescuers battling to save boy, 10, trapped in 115ft shaft after New Year’s Eve fall

Rescuers are scrambling to free a 10-year-old boy from a 115ft deep building site shaft in Vietnam, after he fell down it on New Year’s Eve.

Thai Ly Hao Nam was heard crying for help after he fell into the narrow shaft of a concrete pillar, part of a new bridge being built in the southern Dong Thap province. The boy is said to have been searching for scrap iron with friends.

Teams heard no response from the boy on Monday as they lowered a camera down to try to locate his position.

“I cannot understand how he fell into the hollow concrete pile, which has a diameter of a (25 cm) span only, and was driven 35-metres into the ground,” Le Hoang Bao, director of Dong Thap province’s Department of Transport, told the local Tuoi Tre News newspaper.

Attempts to lift the pile with cranes and excavators had so far been unsuccessful, local media reported.

Oxygen has been pumped into the pile and rescuers have softened the soil around it, but the structure has tilted slightly which has made efforts to extract the boy more complicated.

“We are trying our best,” one rescuer told AFP news agency. “We cannot tell the boy’s condition yet,”

Photos from the scene have captured the boy’s parents watching on fearfully as efforts to rescue the boy are underway.

With additional reporting from AFP and Reuters