Heavy trucks have brought in drilling equipment and giant pipes as rescue workers prepare to dig a tunnel to reach a two-year-old boy who has been trapped in a deep well in southern Spain for more than five days.
No one knows if the boy, Julen, is still alive.
"The priority now is the works on the vertical tunnel," said a spokeswoman for the regional government in Malaga.
Officials said on Thursday they were not losing hope, but the operation would take at least a few days.
Rescuers believe the child is under a layer of earth, sand and stones believed to have been dragged down by Julen when he fell have blocked the well.
A second tunnel is also planned after rescuers have erected a platform to remove earth and debris.
Angel Garcia Vidal, the engineer coordinating the work, told reporters that under normal circumstances, the type of excavation work being carried out to try to get Julen out would take "months."
Julen fell into the well - which is just 25cm wide and 100 metres deep - as his family walked through a private estate in Totalan, Malaga.
The case has captivated Spain and the whole country is holding its breath for the outcome, not least because Julen's parents lived through another family tragedy in 2017. According to media reports, their three-year-old son died suddenly while walking along a beach not far from Totalan.
'Really complicated'
"The hope an angel will help us get him out alive," Julen's father Jose told reporters on Wednesday.
"It feels like it's lasted for months."
The rescue operation is unprecedented in Spain given how difficult it is.
Rescuers are digging two tunnels, one parallel to the well and another at an angle further underground aiming to reach Julen, but the work is complicated by the state of the soil.
Among the nine companies taking part in operations is Stockholm Precision Tools AB, a Swedish company that in 2010 contributed to the spectacular rescue of 33 Chilean miners trapped for 69 days underground.
This race-against-time recalls several other high-profile cases in the 1980s.
Alfredo Rampi, an Italian boy, was found dead in a well near Rome in 1981 while Jessica McClure, an 18-month-old girl, was rescued alive from a well in Texas in October 1987 after more than two days inside.
