Harrowing footage shows passengers clinging for life in falling cable car
Harrowing new footage has shown the moment 12 people were forced to hold on for dear life inside a falling cable car in Pakistan.
The video footage, captured by a BBC News drone, shows the terrified passengers - six children and six adults - clinging on to parts of the cable car as they dangled stranded for 12 hours.
The group were travelling to a school in the cable car when a cable broke halfway through their journey high above the remote Allai valley in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
They were more than 300 metres in the air when they became stranded.
A daring rescue operation took more than 12 hours to complete, with the use of a military helicopter and several zip wire experts.
The children were rescued first, with the adults the last to be plucked free.
Some of the passengers told AFP that several times they lost hope in ever being rescued, and had considered leaping from the chairlift.
“Some of the children were so frustrated and were considering to jump down, but the elder passengers gave us confidence,” 15-year-old Rizwan Ullah told AFP.
“When the cable car was twisting, we were terrified and we started reciting the Koran and gave confidence to each other not to jump down.”
Gul Faraz, a 25-year-old shopkeeper who was in the cable car, said they had started to lose hope that they would be rescued.
“During the whole process we thought we would die. There were some times when we thought we would not survive,” he said.
On Twitter, now known as X, Caretaker Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kak said he was “relieved” after the safe rescue.
“Great team work by the military, rescue departments, district administration as well as the local people.”
The owner of the cable car company in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province was later arrested by police on multiple charges including negligence and endangering valuable lives.
Image credits: BBC News