Pakistan cable car rescue operation: Children stuck on Battagram chairlift

Three more children were later rescued, the military said, without elaborating on how, but vowed to continue its operations until the remaining three people are rescued.

Rescuers had previously been looking into alternative approaches as one of the two military helicopters sent to rescue the group began destabilizing the car as it tried to get closer, a military official told The Post, speaking on the condition of anonymity in keeping with official policy. The approach from the air is precarious, and complicated by winds and another cable.

“The military rescue team is now trying to use other options including a sling operation or rope ladder to save them,” he said earlier in the day. “This is a highly risky operation but the military rescue troops are carrying it out carefully.”

As conditions worsened and sunlight began to wane in the late afternoon, helicopter operations were suspended and ground operations began, the official told The Post. Work is underway to bring a second cable car close to the stranded group, where they will be rescued one by one, the official added. Food and water are being sent via a second, small lift.

A second official, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity as a matter of policy, said a military rescuer provided food, water and emergency medicine to the children in the cable car.

A photograph distributed by the Agence France-Presse news agency showed a soldier descending from a helicopter. The medicine, the official said, was intended to stabilize the children before their rescue.

Military officials told The Post that rescuers were taking precautions because there was another wire 30 feet above the cable car, which could impede a helicopter attempting a rescue. The rescue operation will continue into the night if needed, they said.

The group was traveling across the ravine Tuesday morning in Battagram, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, when the incident took place.

The military sent helicopters to attempt a rescue six hours after the people became trapped, Taimoor Khan, a spokesman for the disaster management authority, told the Associated Press.

The cable car is hanging over a ravine by a single cable after the other snapped, Shariq Riaz Khattak, a rescue official at the scene, told Reuters. He added that the rescue efforts were complicated by gusts and that one of the passengers had fainted.

The children were using the transport, which some officials called a chairlift, to get to school in a mountainous area about 124 miles north of the capital, Islamabad, the agency reported.

Rescue teams were trying to spread nets under the cable car, an official from the area, Jawad Hussain, told Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper. He said locals organized and used the privately owned cable car due to the lack of roads and bridges in the area.

The Pakistani military said special forces were also arriving at the site to rescue those trapped.

Pakistan’s caretaker prime minister, Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar, described the incident as “really alarming.” He posted on X, formerly Twitter, that he ordered authorities “to urgently ensure safe rescue and evacuation of the 8 people stuck in the chairlift.” He also said he has ordered safety inspections of all chairlifts.

Kakar was appointed caretaker prime minister after the country’s Parliament was dissolved this month.

A 20-year-old on the lift, identified only as Gulfaraz, told local outlet Geo News after he and other passengers had been stuck for more than six hours that a 16-year-old who suffers from a heart condition was unconscious for hours. “We don’t even have drinking water in the chairlift,” he said.

The students are 10 to 16 years old, he said.

“The first cable broke down after the chairlift traveled a mile,” he said. He added that the passengers have been waiting for help since early morning and that a second cable snapped.

A schoolteacher, Zafar Iqbal, told Geo News that 150 children in the area typically use the cable car to travel to school.

The cable cars used in mountainous areas of northern Pakistan are often badly maintained, leading to deaths and injuries every year, according to the AP.

One accident in 2017 claimed the lives of 12 people in the popular resort town of Murree, about 40 miles northeast of the capital, after a cable car broke, Geo News reported at the time.

Sarah Dadouch in Beirut contributed to this report.