This is a developing story.
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At least two of the trapped children were rescued, according to local media.
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The cause of the cable car accident remains unclear.
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In a remote area of Pakistan, the cable car made life “easier.”
Pakistani officials were scrambling on Tuesday to rescue seven schoolchildren and an adult who were left hanging dangerously for hours in a cable car high above a deep mountain valley after two of its cables broke.
In a dramatic development, hours after the accident occurred, security forces were able to rescue at least two of the children from the car, according to local media.
The accident occurred around 8:30 a.m. in Allai, in the Battagram district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa 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. The car stopped about 900 feet above the ground, according to the National Disaster Management Authority.
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.”
A remote community watches on helplessly.
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 locally built lifts, often improvised, 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 vulnerability faced by people in the area. Within this valley, home to tens of thousands 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 an earthquake in 2005 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.”
In the remote village, the cable car made life easier.
The village, Pashto, is nestled along the mountains of one of the most remote corners of northwestern Pakistan. Little more than a collection of mud-brick homes, the village itself is carved into the top of a hillside overlooking a valley known as Allai. It is one of the poorest districts in this stretch of Pakistan and for decades was all but cut off from the towns surrounding it.
The nearest functioning hospital is around 90 miles away, residents say. Getting there typically requires tying a sick person or woman in labor onto a traditional bed, carrying them three hours to the closest road and hiring a four-wheel drive vehicle to drive them another three hours to the hospital.
“In many cases, people died or women gave birth along the way,” said Maulana Qasim Mehmood, a local religious leader.
The nearest high school is around four miles away and, until recently, the journey there was similarly difficult. Students spent two or three hours descending a steep mountainside from the village, crossing a small river and climbing up the side of the opposite mountain. Then they had to walk another two miles. Even when they arrived, actually being taught in a classroom was far from certain: Teachers rarely show up to work, if at all.
Around five years ago, engineers from a nearby city agreed to build a cable car in Pashto to help students and others cross the valley, according to Mr. Mehmood. Its construction changed village life drastically, he added. The once hourslong journey across the valley took just 10 minutes — and cost around only 10 cents — on the cable car.
“People were desperate to use such services,” Mr. Mehmood said. “It made people’s lives much easier.”
Isabella Kwai contributed reporting.
