Suspended precariously in mid-air, drone footage, exclusively obtained by the BBC, shows the passengers of a stranded cable car in Pakistan.
All of the people inside the cable car, six children and two adults, were saved during a 12 hour rescue operation which included a military helicopter and zip wire experts.
The owner of the cable car company in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province was later arrested by police on multiple charges including negligence and endangering valuable lives.
Blimey that footage shows just how rickety the cable car was and just how precarious was the occupantsâ situation âŠ
On one of my husbands projects a bridge there was a zip line put up by th e local authorities over the ravine .
It was like a tea trolley yet all and sundry used it , there were no safety precautions whatsoever at all itâs wasnât as high as this cable car but it was high enough I went over it one time just to try it out
Attaullah, 16, was travelling to school on Tuesday to collect his exam results, using a cable car to cross the ravine from his village â as he had done many times before. But when a cable broke and left him, five other children and two adults hanging precariously in the air hundreds of metres above a steep gorge, he said he had no hope he would survive.
âI was hell scared and all the children started screaming. We started holding each other as it kept dangling. I thought I was dead now,â he told the Guardian from the mountainous village of Allai.
The eight passengers were rescued in an operation that lasted more than 16 hours, including several unsuccessful rescue attempts in high winds and fading light.
Videos of the rescue soon spread across social media. In one video, a local man moves down the cable and ties a child to himself to rescue him. Another video shows the rope swaying wildly as the child is secured by a belt around him and is pulled into the helicopter by the military.
The remaining passengers were rescued using a chairlift fashioned out of a bed frame: local experts along with soldiers moved to the car using the remaining cable as a zipline.
The Guardian talked to five of the children, both adults and the father of the sixth child, Irfanullah, who was taken to hospital and is now out of danger.
The youngest, Ibrar Ahmed, 13, said he lost hope many times.
âI thought I was the smallest and I would die before anyone. I had no hope when I did not see any help and failed the attempt till 4pm [âŠ.] I became hopeful when the army rescued Irfanullah and I lost hope again when it became dark and the army halted heli operations. I regained hope when a local man rescued the second boy,â said Ahmed.
An amazing rescue made possible by the fortitude of the adults and children in that tiny, dangling contraption âŠ
TerrifyingâŠespecially when you see the picturesâŠsaying it was a cable car âŠwell it was more like a tin can on a string. Well done no-one panicked and they all got home safe.
