Efforts to Rescue 7 Schoolchildren Dangling From Cable Car

 

Pakistani officials were scrambling a rescue effort on Tuesday after seven schoolchildren and an adult were left hanging dangerously for hours in a cable car high above a deep mountain valley after two of its cables broke.

The accident occurred around 8:30 a.m. in Allai, in the Battagram district of Khyber-Pakhthunkwa Province. The cable car, which travels above a stream, is a regular mode of transport for residents of the mountainous northern region, and the children, ages 10 to 12, were headed to a nearby school.

As panic gripped the passengers and their families, they issued urgent pleas for assistance. The authorities sent an army helicopter to the site, and video on local television showed it hovering above the cable car at some distance as a commando slid down a rope and delivered food and water.

But as the helicopter tried to get closer to the cable car, the car seemed to begin shaking heavily, which appeared to make an air rescue difficult. 

Before the commando delivered the supplies, one of the passengers told a local TV news network that he and the others had been stuck for more than six hours without food or water. He said that one child with a heart condition had fainted after panicking. “My mobile phone battery is depleting fast,” he said.

The cause of the breakage, which appeared to leave only one cable intact, was unclear. Anwaar-ul Haq Kakar, Pakistan’s interim prime minister, called the accident “alarming” as he ordered the rescue operation.

Mr. Kakar instructed the authorities to carry out safety inspections on all private mountain lifts to ensure their safety, according to a statement from his office.

“It is a delicate rescue operation,” Mufti Ghulamullah, the mayor of Allai borough, said in a telephone interview. “With each attempt to bring the rescuer closer to the cable car using the helicopter, the gusts of wind from the rotor would jolt and unsettle the chairlift, causing the children to cry out in fear.”

The incident has rattled residents in Pashto, a village of some 30,000 people situated in the remote Allai valley in northwestern Pakistan. 

“They are in front of us but we are helpless — observing them and unable to provide any help,” Mufti Hasan Zaib, a religious scholar whose son was trapped in the cable car, said in a phone interview as he watched the rescue efforts from a nearby hillside.

Around 400 to 500 people use the cable car for commuting every day, residents say. Such often improvised, locally built lifts are typically powered by petrol or diesel engines and are privately owned.

Maulana Qasim Mehmood, a local religious leader, said that the incident was just a small glimpse of the daily helplessness and vulnerability faced by people in the area. Within this valley, home to millions of people, fundamental necessities like health care, education, transportation and other essential elements of life were absent, he said.

Allai was also badly affected by the 2005 earthquake that killed more than 80,000 people and injured more than 100,000.

“As beautiful as this valley is, it holds many times more hidden sorrows,” Mr. Mehmood said. “The villages in Allai are several decades behind the global development standards.”

This is a developing story.

By Salman Masood, Christina Goldbaum and Zia ur-Rehman

Reporting from Islamabad, London and Karachi