PAKISTAN — Five children were rescued by Pakistan’s military after seven students and one teacher became stranded in a cable car dangling over a ravine when a line snapped early Tuesday morning.
The group has been stuck since 7 a.m. local time. They were traveling to school in a remote mountainous area in Battagram, about 125 miles north of Islamabad, when the cable car became stranded halfway across the ravine, about 900 feet above the ground.
The car is dangling by a single cable after the other snapped, Shariq Riaz Khattak a rescue official at the site told Reuters.
Five children have been rescued so far, the Pakistan Armed Forces said in a press release. Helicopter operations, which have been complicated by gusty winds, have been “halted due to darkness,” said regional police chief Tahir Ayub Khan.
No further details were immediately available.
The rescue mission has been complicated due to gusty winds in the area and the fact the helicopters’ rotor blades risk further destabilizing the lift, Khattak said.
“Our situation is precarious, for god’s sake do something,” Gulfaraz, a 20-year-old who is on the cable car, told local television channel Geo News over the phone, appealing to authorities to rescue them as soon as possible. He said the other students are aged between 10 and 15 and one had fainted due to heat and fear.
The rescue efforts have transfixed the country, with Pakistanis crowded around television sets, as local media showed footage of an emergency worker dangling from a helicopter cable close to the small cabin, with those onboard seen cramped together.
At the scene, crowds of villagers gathered on the vertiginous hillside anxiously watching the operation.
Muzaffar Khan, a district administration official in Battagram, said there were seven students and one teacher aboard, updating earlier reports of six students and two teachers.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Mushtaq Yusufzai reported from Pakistan; Minyvonne Burke reported from Pittsburgh.
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