How Pakistan rescued cable car school children stranded hundreds of feet above ground

How Pakistan rescued cable car school children stranded hundreds of feet above ground

Islamabad, Pakistan CNN — Battling anxiety and nausea, they huddled together in the ruptured cable car, gripped by fear as they dangled precariously hundreds of feet in the air.

With little to drink and some of them drifting in and out of consciousness, the six children and two adults endured a 14-hour ordeal stranded above the lush forests of Pakistan’s mountainous northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, their lives hanging in the balance.

But their cries for help were answered and late Tuesday, authorities revealed how they painstakingly saved the passengers – one by helicopter and the others via zipline – in a remarkable rescue operation complicated by the weather.

“The extremely difficult rescue mission was made more difficult by the strong winds in the area and the dangers involved in such operations, including the helicopter’s rotor blades destabilizing the lift,” Pakistan’s armed forces said in a statement.

The cable car, which was traveling between the villages of Batangi and Jhangri in Battagram district – about four hours from the nearest road – is used to ferry children to school, cutting down a nearly four-hour journey to a matter of minutes.

But what was meant to be a quick gondola trip turned into a nerve-wrecking life or