Pakistan rescues 6 children and 2 adults stranded in cable car at 900 feet

PESHAWAR, Pakistan - Pakistan’s military has rescued eight people, six children and two adults, who spent hours stuck in agonizing danger in a cable car suspended at least 900 feet in the air, after a cable snapped above a remote mountainous area in the north of the country.

The army’s Special Services Group rescued two children via helicopter by means of a sling lowered from above, a local official and a spokesman for the provincial emergency services said. The rest were rescued in a ground-based effort, after the helicopter approach became too dangerous, using a chairlift edged along the intact cable, according to media reports.

The first helicopter rescue took four attempts, said Bilal Faizi, spokesman for the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region’s 1122 rescue service. A second child was then rescued by the same method, the National Disaster Management Authority said in a statement. Later in the evening, Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar, the country’s caretaker prime minister, announced that all children aboard had been rescued. He thanks the military and local rescue workers for their efforts. Authorities confirmed that the two adults had been rescued as well.

Rescuers began looking into alternative methods after two military helicopters sent to rescue the group began to further destabilize the dangling car on approach, a military official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity in keeping with official policy. Wind and another cable some 30 feet above the stranded car complicated the maneuver.

As conditions worsened and sunlight began to wane in the late afternoon, helicopter operations were suspended and ground operations began, the official said. Work began to bring a second cable car close to the stranded group, along the intact cable from which the car remained suspended, to pull them away, the official added.

Food, water and medicine were passed to those trapped, by a small lift affixed to the same cable, according to a second official, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity as a matter of policy.

A photograph distributed by the Agence France-Presse news agency showed a soldier descending from a helicopter to attempt the initial rescues. The medicine, the official said, was intended to stabilize the children before carrying them up.

The group was traveling across the ravine Tuesday morning in Battagram, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, when the incident took place.

The military sent helicopters to attempt a rescue six hours after the people became trapped, Taimoor Khan, a spokesman for the disaster management authority, told the Associated Press.

The cable car is hanging over a ravine by a single cable after the other snapped, Shariq Riaz Khattak, a rescue official at the scene, told Reuters. He added that the rescue efforts were complicated by gusts and that one of the passengers had fainted.

The children were using the transport, which some officials called a chairlift, to get to school in a mountainous area about 124 miles north of the capital, Islamabad, the agency reported.

Rescue teams were trying to spread nets under the cable car, an official from the area, Jawad Hussain, told Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper. He said locals organized and used the privately owned cable car due to the lack of roads and bridges in the area.

The Pakistani military said special forces were also arriving at the site to rescue those trapped.

Pakistan’s caretaker prime minister, Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar, described the incident as “really alarming.” He posted on X, formerly Twitter, that he ordered authorities “to urgently ensure safe rescue and evacuation of the 8 people stuck in the chairlift.” He also said he has ordered safety inspections of all chairlifts.

Kakar was appointed caretaker prime minister after the country’s Parliament was dissolved this month.

A 20-year-old on the lift, identified only as Gulfaraz, told local outlet Geo News after he and other passengers had been stuck for more than six hours that a 16-year-old who suffers from a heart condition was unconscious for hours. “We don’t even have drinking water in the chairlift,” he said.

The students are 10 to 16 years old, he said.

“The first cable broke down after the chairlift traveled a mile,” he said. He added that the passengers have been waiting for help since early morning and that a second cable snapped.

A schoolteacher, Zafar Iqbal, told Geo News that 150 children in the area typically use the cable car to travel to school.

The cable cars used in mountainous areas of northern Pakistan are often badly maintained, leading to deaths and injuries every year, according to the AP.

One accident in 2017 claimed the lives of 12 people in the popular resort town of Murree, about 40 miles northeast of the capital, after a cable car broke, Geo News reported at the time.