2023-08-22 10:48:21
Six children and two adults were suspended more than 270 meters in Pakistan
A rescue operation is underway as eight people, including six children, are stranded on a cable car some 350 meters above the ground after a cable snapped in a remote mountainous area in northern Pakistan, the Agency said on Tuesday. National Disaster Management of the country.
The children were using the chairlift to go to school when a cable snapped.
“For God’s sake help us,” he previously told local media.
The agency said on the X social network, the platform formerly known as Twitter, that the army had sent a military helicopter to Battagram, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, to help with the rescue operation. According to the Pakistan Army, a second helicopter has been deployed and special forces are also arriving at the scene to rescue those trapped.
The car can be seen in the image shared by the agency hanging in the air. Rescue teams are trying to lay nets under the cable car, an official in the area, Jawad Hussain, told Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper.
On local television, army commandos could be seen trying to descend with ropes from the helicopters to the cable car. An expert warned that the rescue was incredibly delicate because the wind created by the helicopters’ blades could further weaken the cables that hold the car in the air.
Family members of those trapped prayed as they anxiously watched the operation unfold. The bailout also stunned Pakistanis across the country who watched it on television.
One of the cables snapped while the eight people were crossing a river canyon in the Battagram district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Villagers frequently use cable cars to get to school, government offices or businesses in Pakistan’s highlands, but the cars are often poorly maintained and people are killed or injured each year while traveling in them.
Helicopters were sent in to try to lift people off the cable car, but only after they had spent six hours precariously suspended 1,150 feet (350 meters) above the ground, according to Taimoor Khan, a spokesman for the disaster management authority.
A Pakistani army helicopter tries to rescue people stranded on a chairlift. Capture
Pakistan’s acting Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar ordered the helicopter rescue, Khan said.
Tipu Sultan, a retired army brigadier and defense expert, warned that the helicopters themselves could make the situation worse, but that commandos would be well aware of that risk. Khan added that the pilots were flying “carefully.”
A view shows a helicopter carrying out a rescue operation next to the cable car with students stranded in the air in Battagram, Pakistan, on August 22, 2023, in this screenshot obtained from a social media video. Umeed Sahar/via REUTERS
“Pray for those trapped in the cable car to be rescued safely,” Sultan said.
In 2017, 10 people died when a cable car fell into a ravine hundreds of meters (feet) deep in the popular mountain resort of Murree after the cable snapped.
News in development…
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