Rescue of a group of people from a cable car hanging hundreds of meters high

(Patria) - A group of eight people, including six children, have been trapped for hours in a cable car at an altitude of 914 meters, and a military helicopter is coming to their aid in the town of Battagram in the Pakistani province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Local media report that the incident occurred in the morning hours when the cables of the cable car, on which the unfortunate people were traveling to school located on the other side of the canyon, broke.

Local official Mufti Ghulamullah said that two cables on the cable car broke and that rescue teams are on the ground.

Ghulamullah explained that there is no road or bridge in that region, so the locals use the cable car to cross the river.

Jawad Hussain from Civil Defense said that the first rescue team failed to help the unfortunate group due to the inaccessibility of the mountainous terrain and the height at which the cable car got stuck.

The head of the interim government of Pakistan, Anwar-ul-Haq Kakar, asked the Pakistani army to send a rescue helicopter to the scene and speed up the rescue operation. He also ordered the closure of all cable cars in the region that do not meet basic safety standards.

Six children and two adults were suspended inside a cable car dangling over a deep #Pakistani valley on Tuesday, as a military helicopter hovered nearby.

The children were using the chairlift to cross the valley to get to school when a cable broke at a height of up to 1,200 feet… pic.twitter.com/cU45PSFD1a

— Siddhant Anand (@JournoSiddhant) August 22, 2023

The Ministry of Interior announced that the helicopter arrived after four hours and that rescuers are trying to place a net under the stuck cable car.

Teacher Zafer Iqbal said that the people in the cable car have been trapped for five hours, and that at least 150 students use this dangerous cable car daily to go to school because road infrastructure is not developed in the region.

One of the trapped passengers, Gulfaraz, told the police by phone that one student has been unconscious for three hours, and that these are students aged ten to 15.

Gulfaraz called on the authorities to help them urgently because they have no more food or water, and their phone batteries are running out.