[ad_1] In miracle scenes, all eight people including six schoolchildren, trapped for hours in a stricken cable car high above a remote Pakistan vall
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In miracle scenes, all eight people including six schoolchildren, trapped for hours in a stricken cable car high above a remote Pakistan valley were brought to safety late on Tuesday.
“The rescue operation has been completed. The two adults were the last to be rescued,” said Bilal Faizi, an official with the Pakistan emergency service.
The group were using the chairlift to access a school when a cable broke at a height of up to 365 metres midway through its journey in a remote, mountainous part of northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
The children were rescued first with the adults the last to be plucked free.
On Twitter, now known as X, Caretaker Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kak said he was “relived: with the safe rescue.
“Great team work by the military, rescue departments, district administration as well as the local people”.
Makeshift cable cars are common in parts of Pakistan. They enable journeys over valleys that would other side take hours to be completed in minutes.
A video of an early rescue showed a child strapped into a harness swinging from underneath a helicopter as crowds cheer in the background.
Several military helicopters had earlier in the day flown reconnaissance sorties and an airman was lowered by harness to deliver food, water and medicine, Tanveer Ur Rehman, a local government official, told AFP.
“This is a delicate operation that demands meticulous accuracy. The helicopter cannot approach the chairlift closely, as its downwash (air pressure) might snap the sole chain supporting it,” he said.
Anxious crowds gathered on both sides of the ravine, which is several hours from any sizeable town.
“Every time the helicopter lowered the rescuer closer to the chairlift, the wind from the helicopter would shake and disbalance the chairlift making the children scream in fear,” Ghulamullah, chairman of the Allai valley area, told Geo News.
‘What can they do?’
The chairlift broke down at around 7am Tuesday (0200 GMT), with residents using mosque loudspeakers to alert neighbourhood officials across the Allai valley.
Headmaster Ali Asghar Khan told AFP by phone that the children were teenage boys and students at his government high school Battangi Pashto.
“The school is located in a mountainous area and there are no safe crossings, so it’s common to use the chairlift,” Khan said.
“The parents are gathered at the site of the chairlift. What can they do? They are waiting for the rescue officials to get their children out. We are all worried.” Abid Ur Rehman, a teacher from another school in the area, said around 500 people had gathered to watch the rescue mission.
“Parents and women are crying for the safety of their children,” he told AFP. Syed Hammad Haider, a senior Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provincial official, said the gondola was hanging about 1000 to 1200 feet above the ground.
Caretaker Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar issued a directive for all chairlifts in mountainous areas to be inspected and for those that are not “safety compliant” to be immediately closed.
Cable cars that carry passengers and sometimes cars are common across the northern areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and Gilgit-Baltistan, and are vital in connecting villages and towns in areas where roads cannot be built.
In 2017, 10 people were killed when a chairlift cable broke, sending passengers plunging into a ravine in a mountain hamlet near the capital Islamabad.
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