On Tuesday afternoon, firemen in Madrid successfully rescued two young children from a ten metre deep well on the outskirts of Algete. The children apparently went missing on Sunday.
At around 14:00 on Tuesday, a member of the public alerted the authorities after discovering the two children, a brother and sister aged 8 years and 9 years, trapped in the deep well on urbanisation Valderrey in Algete.
The well was about ten metres deep and one and a half metres in diameter and firemen had to use ropes and harnesses to extract the poor mites.
Police are now trying to ascertain how the children, who live with their mother in the town of Torrelaguna, some 28 kilometres away, managed to end up in the well.
On Monday, the mother, a Rumanian national, reported that the children missing went missing on Sunday and suggested that they could have been kidnapped by her former husband who now lives in Germany.
After the divorce, the mother was awarded custody of the children and the husband was allowed visitation rights during some weekends. This past weekend, however, was apparently not one of those specified weekends.
The former husband usually lives in Germany, although most of his family still lives in Torrelaguna.
The children were taken to the Hospital La Paz for a check-up but were apparently in good health following their ordeal.