Military helicopters and Pakistani commandos have rescued eight people, including six schoolchildren, stranded for hours in a homemade cable car cabin suspended over a deep ravine in a remote mountainous region of northwest Pakistan.
The six schoolchildren were stuck with two adults for more than 12 hours on Tuesday after their gondola broke down in the verdant valley of Allai, a mountainous and isolated region, before being rescued in the evening by military helicopters and experts in Zipline.
They were on their way to school, where three of them were to receive their end-of-year results, when two of the three cables operating the cabin broke, stopping it more than 300m above the precipice. .
“When the incident happened, I forgot everything. All I remembered was my mother and God,” one of them, named Niaz Muhammad, 18, told AFP. years old, and originally from the village of Pashto.
On Wednesday, Niaz and his two classmates walked for two hours on a rocky path to reach their school and find that they had passed their exams, before being examined again by doctors.
Some of the passengers of the makeshift cable car told AFP that they had lost hope several times and had considered jumping from it.
“Some of the children were very frustrated and thought about jumping, but the older passengers gave us confidence,” said Rizwan Ullah, 15.
“When the gondola swirled around, we were terrified and we started reciting the Quran and encouraging each other not to jump,” he added.
All afternoon Tuesday, army helicopters carried out reconnaissance operations near the cabin.
A soldier was lowered in a harness to give the occupants food, water and medicine, but the air current caused by the blades caused him to touch the last cable holding the cabin, which twisted and trembled.
“When the helicopter arrived and then left without rescuing us, we lost hope,” said Gul Faraz, a 25-year-old shopkeeper who was also in the cabin.
“There were times when we thought we weren’t going to survive,” he acknowledged.
The inhabitants, who manage the cable car themselves, had to resort to the loudspeakers of the mosques to alert the authorities on the other side of the valley, in this area devoid of any road or bridge.
For hours, villagers and relatives gathered on either side of the deep ravine, located several hours from any town, feverishly attended the rescue operations.
A first child was finally able to be airlifted after 12 hours, as daylight began to decline. The army helicopter was then forced by weather conditions and nightfall to return to base.
Pakistani Special Service Group (SSG) commandos, known as “Maroon Berets”, and local experts then used the cable holding the pod as a zip line to rescue the rest of the group.
The two adults were the last to be picked up, a few hours later.
Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar called the rescuers “heroes of the nation”.
“A tremendous teamwork from the army, the emergency services, the local authorities and the population,” he praised on X (formerly Twitter).
Niaz feels like a “second life” has been granted to her. “It was the most terrifying moment of my life.”
“When I got home, she (her mother) was waiting for me at the door. We hugged, she kissed me and we cried. It was very emotional for both of us,” he said. taken back.
In Pakistan, such homemade cabins activated by cables or sometimes simple ropes, are frequently used to connect isolated villages in mountainous regions.
Authorities announced on Wednesday the closure of all such devices for a week in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where the incident occurred, while they are inspected.
But, like others in his village, Niaz has, despite the severe ordeal he has just experienced, no other option than to continue to use the cable car to get around.
23/08/2023 14:52:05 – Pashto (Pakistan) (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
