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.
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.
The village in the mountainous Battagram district near Peshwar has a rough terrain, with one narrow steep road crossing through tributaries and a river, making the rescue even more difficult.
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.
Thousands of people gathered at the rescue site until midnight chanting “God is great” after the children were rescued. On Wednesday, police arrested Gul Zarin, the owner of the cable car, on charges of ignoring safety measures.
The cable car charged 10 rupees to students for one crossing, and others were charged 20 rupees.
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.
“I 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 [….] 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,” said Ahmed.
Attaullah said the group left for the school at 7:30am, but soon after the cable car broke and was left hanging with one cable.
“After four hours, the first military helicopter hovered over our heads and he tried his best but it did not succeed. The second heli returned with no success as well. It made me very worried that helicopters were not succeeding and we will die soon,” said Attaullah.
Rizwanullah, 15, said: “I could see death in front of my eyes. The wind pressure was too fast and the cable car was dangling and it had no doors from one side for over a year. Everyone was crying.”The children said that it was Gul Faraz, a local man who was with them in the cable car, who told them they would survive. It was Faraz who raised the alarm.
The 24-year-old did not betray to the group his fears. “To be honest, no matter how I was making children calm and telling them we would survive, I did not see any chance that we would. It was a chaotic situation. But I was struggling to find ways and my phone saved us.”
Faraz made many calls, informing his elder brother, local clerics and friends about the cable car incident. “For more than one hour, there was no mobile service in the cable car. As soon as I saw mobile networks, I called everyone I knew but since morning I have switched off my phone as I am getting infinite calls,” he said, laughing.
No one in the stricken cable car had believed they would survive. Umraiz, the father of Irfanullah, who was rescued by the military, said he thought the cable car would crash to the ground and his son would die.
“I did not have any strength to see the hanging cable car and I thought I would wait here until it crash and I screamed my heart out and asked my son to start praying to God. Just see the luck, the new cable had broken but not the old one from the cable.”
Umraiz said that the army, local administration and people across the country and the world had prayed for the passengers. Umraiz and other local residents said the authorities had known about issues with the cable car, which had no door from one side, but they had not paid heed until now.
Fayyaz Ali, a schoolteacher, said: “It is like we don’t act until there is a crisis. For example, we have four teachers for 326 students. Nobody cares here for the issues that matter and the same happened yesterday. Authorities should act when they come to know about an issue, not when it becomes an international issue.”
