Attaullah, 16, was travelling to school on Tuesday to collect his exam results, using a cable car to cross the ravine from his village – 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.
“I was hell scared and all the children started screaming. We started holding each other as it kept dangling. I thought I was dead now,” he told the Guardian from the mountainous village of Allai.
