The eight people, including six children, who were stranded on Tuesday in an improvised cable car in a remote mountainous region in northwest Pakistan, have been rescued.
They are all safe. The eight people, including six children, who were stranded on Tuesday, August 22, in an improvised cable car suspended at an altitude of about 350 meters in a remote mountainous region in northwest Pakistan. One of the cables operating it had malfunctioned.
“The rescue operation is complete. The two adults were the last to be rescued,” said Bilal Faizi, a Pakistani rescue official.
The children were using the cabin to go to school on the other side of a steep valley crossed by a river in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province when it got stuck at over 300 meters in altitude after one of the cables operating it stopped working.
The cabin became stuck around 7:00 a.m. local time (4:00 a.m. Paris time). The residents, who managed the cable car themselves, had to use the loudspeakers of the mosques to alert officials on the other side of the valley in this area devoid of any roads or bridges.
Ali Asghar Khan, the headmaster of a public school in Battagram, explained to AFP that the children involved were teenagers enrolled in his institution.
“What can they do?”
“The school is located in a mountainous region, and there are no safe passages, so it is common to use the cable car,” he said.
“The parents are gathered where the cable car is. What can they do? They are waiting for the rescuers to get their children out of there. We are all worried,” he added.
According to Abid Ur Rehman, a teacher in another local school, nearly 500 people have gathered to follow the rescue mission.
In Pakistan, such improvised cabins activated by cables or sometimes simple ropes are frequently used to connect isolated villages in mountainous areas.
The interim Prime Minister, Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar, immediately ordered the inspection of all privately-owned devices of this kind and the closure of those that do not meet safety standards.
In 2017, 10 people died in a similar accident near the capital Islamabad.
With AFP