Six children and two teachers remain trapped in a handmade cable car that hangs from a single cable some 350 meters above a ravine in Pakistan. The helicopter rescue mission has been complicated by strong winds, according to authorities.
The children were using the cable car to go to school in a hilly area of Battagram, some 200 kilometers north of Islamabad, authorities said.
The inhabitants, who managed the cable car themselves, had to resort to loudspeakers in the mosques to alert officials on the other side of the valley, in this region devoid of roads and bridges.
Pakistan's National Disaster Management Authority said in a statement that a cable had snapped and an army helicopter had been dispatched for a rescue operation after attempts to fix the fault had been unsuccessful.
The cabin, open on two sides, had already been suspended in the air for almost four hours when an army helicopter arrived at the scene, according to images on local television networks. However, the rescue mission has been complicated by gusts of wind in the area and the fact that the helicopter's rotor blades could further destabilize the cable car.
"We've been stuck in the sky for almost five hours," a man trapped in the cabin named Gulfraz told Geo News by phone. "The situation is so bad that one man has already passed out. A helicopter arrived, but he left without any operation," he added.
"The school is located in a mountainous area and there are no safe steps, so the usual thing is to use the cable car," Ali Asghar Khan, director of a public school in the city of Battagram, where the children are, told AFP. affected, who are adolescents.
"The parents are gathered where the cable car is. What can they do? They are waiting for the rescuers to take their children out of there. We are all worried," he added.
In Pakistan, these homemade cable cars, powered by cables or sometimes simple ropes, are often used to connect isolated villages in hilly areas.
Pakistan's interim Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar expressed concern in a post on the X messaging platform, formerly known as Twitter. "I have ordered the authorities to carry out safety inspections of all these private cable cars and ensure that their operation and use are safe," he said in a post.
