An 8-year-old boy who became lost in a city sewer found alive after 8-day ordeal

• An 8-year-old boy who went missing for over a week in Germany was found alive in a sewer.
• The boy was found completely undressed, and with severe dehydration and hypothermia.

An 8-year-old boy in Germany who went missing for eight days was found alive in a sewer, reports say.

The boy, who has only been identified as Joe, went missing on June 17 and sparked a widespread search.

Police in Oldenburg, Lower Saxony, initially said that they feared that the boy, who they said has a learning disability, might misinterpret the search for him as a game and hide from them, CNN reported.

Joe was eventually found just 1,000 feet from his home under a manhole last Saturday after a passerby reported hearing sounds under the street, police said.

The boy was found completely undressed, and with severe dehydration and hypothermia, but was not seriously injured, police said. He was taken to a nearby hospital to be treated.

"After evaluating all traces and clues, the officers now assume that Joe crawled through a drain into the rainwater sewer system on the day of his disappearance and lost his orientation after several meters," the police statement said.

The boy likely climbed into the concrete pipe while playing, police said, and climbed along it for 23 meters (75 feet). He then followed the sewer system through a plastic pipe with a diameter of about 60 centimeters (about 23.5 inches).

The police said they have ruled out any third-party involvement at this point in time.

At one stage during the investigation, police launched a homicide investigation after receiving a tip that the boy had been seen with an unknown person, according to the police statement. This later proved to be false.