Harrowing drone video shows trapped cable car passengers clinging for their lives before rescue
Hair-raising drone video shows six children and two adults dangling hundreds of feet in the air inside a cable car in Pakistan — before they were finally rescued in a daring helicopter operation.
The jaw-dropping, eye-level footage obtained by the BBC and Sky News shows one of the adults clinging onto the chassis of the listing gondola some 900 feet above a ravine in the remote region of Battagram.
A child appears to be on the phone inside the car as the drone circles just feet away.
The eight passengers, who got stuck early Tuesday when one of the cables broke on their way to a school, were finally saved from the 16-hour vertiginous ordeal in a rescue operation involving helicopters and military commandos.
One of the youngest was grabbed by a soldier attached to a chopper, while others were lowered to the ground in a makeshift chairlift devised with a wooden bed frame and ropes.
“I had heard stories about miracles, but I saw a miraculous rescue happening with my own eyes,” 15-year-old Osama Sharif said after returning to terra firma.
“We suddenly felt a jolt, and it all happened so suddenly that we thought all of us are going to die,” he said about the first terrifying seconds.
Another child, Attaullah Shah, said he feared “it was over” when the cable broke, the BBC reported.
“When the chairlift was halfway there, its rope broke. It was dangling and I was terrified,” he said.
One of the rescuers flown in to help save the group was Muhammad Ali Swati, a 34-year-old zipliner and adventure tourism operator, The Telegraph reported.
“I was summoned to aid in the rescue mission,” Swati, who is from the Beer-Kund village in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, told the UK news outlet. “After packing my bags, I was airlifted to the site.
“When I first reached the cable car, the children shouted at me out of fear. They were scared that if the rope moved, the lift would fall,” he said.
Swati explained that it took several minutes to allay their fears.
“We instructed each person, one by one, about the safety gear. Behind us, there was a protective rope tied, which the army personnel and civilians were pulling to help,” he told The Telegraph.
“They were in extreme distress and clung to me like a child clings to their mother. Tears welled up in my eyes — I can’t express the feeling,” he added.
The adventurer said the operation did not go off without a hitch.
“As I was bringing three children to safety, my left hand got trapped in a taut rope,” he said, adding that he almost suffered a severe injury in the mishap.
“Miraculously, they momentarily slackened the rope, allowing me to free my hand,” Swati said, referring to other rescuers hundreds of feet away.
Another rescuer was 30-year-old Sahib Khan, 30, whose family specializes in building cable cars, the outlet reported. He helped rig the improvised zipline used in the effiort.
“I began my operation around 7 p.m. after sunset and managed to bring the first child back to the ground,” he told The Telegraph. “The most challenging task for me was to convince the children to come out of the dolly.”
The students were all between 10 and 16 years old, including one who fainted “due to heat and fear,” rescue official Shariq Riaz Khattak said.
Meanwhile, cable car owner Gul Zareen has been arrested on multiple charges, including endangering valuable lives and negligence, the BBC reported.
