BATTAGRAM-UNS: A team of the Pakistan Army successfully rescued two children who were among those stranded in a chairlift since Tuesday morning in Battagram city of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa after a cable broke.
According to Inter-Services Public Relations, the children, who were going to school and met with the dreadful accident, were airlifted by a helicopter in a sling operation. Efforts are under way to shift the remining people to safe place.
A large number of people, who are observing the operation, raised slogans in favour of the army after the two children were successfully rescued in the fourth attempt.
The rescue operation through helicopter has been called off as the night fell while the ground operations will continue to take the stranded people to safety.
Earlier, there were reports that four children were rescued.
Six schoolchildren and two teachers were stranded since 7am when they were using the chairlift to get to the school in a mountainous area about 200 kilometres (125 miles) north of Islamabad.
Officials said the rescue mission was complicated by gusty winds in the area and the helicopters’ rotor blades risked destabilising the cable car.
Furthermore, special services troops, trained in sling operations, are also involved in this “extremely dangerous and risky operation”.
Pakistan’s caretaker Prime Minister Anwaarul Haq Kakar expressed concern in a post on messaging platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
“…I have also directed the authorities to conduct safety inspections of all such private chairlifts and ensure that they are safe to operate and use,” he said in a post.
The KP chief minister also directed the authorities concerned to utilise all availabe resources to rescue the teachers and schoolchildren.
