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Rescuers in Vietnam were desperately trying to free a 10-year boy on Monday two days after he fell into the narrow open shaft of a concrete pile at a construction site on New Year’s Eve.

Ly Hao Nam was heard crying for help shortly after he fell into the pile on Saturday morning, but rescuers received no response from him on Monday as they lowered a camera down to try to locate his position in the 35-meter (115-feet) long support pillar.

The calamity occurred at a bridge construction site in the Mekong Delta region where the boy had been searching with friends for scrap iron.

“I cannot understand how he fell into the hollow concrete pile, which has a diameter of a (25-centimeter/10-inch) span only, and was driven 35 meters into the ground,” Le Hoang Bao, director of Dong Thap province’s Department of Transport, told Tuoi Tre News, a local newspaper.

Efforts to lift the pile with cranes and excavators had so far failed and rescuers were unable to determine the boy’s position, media reported.

Rescuers have pumped oxygen into the pile and have softened the soil around it but the pile has tilted slightly, complicating extraction efforts. (CNN)