“My mobile phone battery is depleting fast,” the passenger added.Īfter several failed attempts, a rescuer finally managed to lift off one child. He said that one child with a heart condition had fainted. By the afternoon, the authorities had sent an army helicopter to the site, and local television showed it hovering above the cable car as a commando slid down a rope and delivered supplies.īefore that, one passenger had told a local TV network, he and the others had been stuck for more than six hours without food or water. ![]() Sharif and seven other passengers, including several schoolchildren, suspended hundreds of feet in the air.Īs the car dangled precariously, military crews began a dramatic rescue lasting some 12 heart-pounding hours, plucking two people off the car via a rope attached to a helicopter and then, as night fell, using a zip line to bring the rest to safety.Īs panic gripped the passengers and their families realized what had happened, they issued urgent pleas for assistance, residents said. Two of the cables supporting the car snapped, leaving Mr. ![]() It was Tuesday morning, and Usama Sharif, who is 20 but still a 10th grader, shouldered his backpack, left his mud-brick home in a mountainside village in northwest Pakistan and walked down a dirt path to the cable car that would take him across the deep mountain valley to his school, his father said.įor years, the cable car had offered a lifeline to the otherwise isolated village, Pashto, deep in the mountains of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, easing an otherwise arduous journey for students to attend school or for sick members of the community to reach a hospital.īut just minutes into the cable car ride, the daily journey across the gorge turned into a brush with disaster.
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