Highlights

• Three different missions were launched to rescue 8 people stranded in a cable car at 600ft
• A Pakistan Army helicopter lifted one boy with a sling.
• The airlift had to be abandoned after the boy hit a cable above the stranded car. He remained unhurt.
• Working single handedly, Sahib Khan reached the stranded chairlift in his small doli and rescued one boy
• Ali, Ilyas, Ammad and a PAF solider Ahsan then performed the zip line rescue for the remaining six people
• The Pakistan Army supported all three missions.
• ‘They clung to me like children would cling to their mothers,’ Rescuers describe emotional scenes inside the cable car

One of the most daring rescue operations in Pakistani’s history was performed by three different teams – one comprising a single man – to safely bring back eight people stranded in a cable car dangling at 600ft above a river stream in the Battagram district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Seven schoolboys and an adult were stranded in a cable car suspended between two mountain villages of Jhangri Pashto and Battangi in Allai tehsil of Battagram district on Tuesday morning. They were rescued after 15 hours as the Pakistan Army Aviation, the Pakistan Air Force, ground troops of the Pakistan Army, the district administration and local people explored various options to rescue them. The rescuers operated under a policy of zero-error, according to officials.

However, disinformation took over the internet with conflicting claims about who did what and who should be called the real hero.

Aaj News has pieced together all the information, hearing from the civilian rescuers and local officials.

August 22 began as a normal day for the people living in the Jhangri village on the green slopes of the Karakorum Range. Children left the village for the school located across a stream on another mountain slope in the village Battangi.

A journey from Jhangri to Battangi on foot would involve descending one mountain slope and climbing the other and it would take around three hours. The cable car installed by a local man Gul Zarin had reduced the travel to its bird fly distance of four minutes. At least four groups of children and adults took the cable car and safely arrived in Battangi on Tuesday.

The cable car – or doli as it is known locally – started its fifth trip at 7:45am with seven school boys, aged between 10 and 15, and an adult Gulfaraz from Jhangri. The doli moved underneath its steel cables at its regular pace when suddenly a cable attached to one of its four corners snapped, leaving it tilted in an extreme position. It stopped there.

Children born in this mountain region have no fear of heights, but they were now hanging in the sky, with no hope of an immediate rescue. With 600 feet between them and the land, they began to panic.

Mobile coverage in the region is sporadic. Gulfraz told a private run TV channel that they got the first mobile phone signal at 8:30am.

Phones rang in Allai, Battagram and Mansehra. The commissioner of the Hazara region contacted the interior ministry and other institutions and requested helicopters for rescue.

However, the poor phone coverage hampered coordination efforts. At 11am the first helicopter arrived at the scene to take stock of the situation.

Initial rescue attempts met a failure as air pressure generated by helicopter rotors caused the gondola of the cable car to shake violently. Children in the gondola and their parents standing on the ground panicked. The helicopter turned back.

Another helicopter mounted a similar operation a little later but met the same fate.

This is when the authorities called in a Pakistan Air Force helicopter.

A commando from an SSG sling team approached the cable car and attached harness to one of the boys. He was lifted by the sling. However, as he was being pulled up the boy hit an older cable fixed several feet above the doli.

The boy remained unhurt but it demonstrated the danger that the wire posed to the people being rescued. This was in addition to the risk of causing the remaining cables to snap under the air pressure from helicopter rotors.

Hence, helicopter rescue had to be abandoned.

The darkness of the night was setting in. Authorities quickly decided to engage zip line experts from Mansehra.

Mohammad Ali from Heavensway Company and two of his team members, Ilyas and Ammad, were airlifted from Mansehra to Jhangri in a military helicopter. Ali told reporters that he was contacted by the Mansehra deputy commissioner who informed him that a zipline rescue was their final hope.

By this time, Sahib Khan from the Bisham district of KP, had already arrived in the region. Sahib Khan and his family members are in the business of building and installing cable cars.

Khan was the first to approach the stranded cable car after the helicopter rescue was abandoned. He attached his smaller doli with the same cable that was supporting the stranded cable car and traveled to the stranded doli.

Sahib Khan rescued one child with his small doli. He told BBC Urdu that school boys were not ready to climb into his doli. He attached a harness to one of them and encouraged him to come with him.

But Sahib Khan was not working on his own. He told the BBC that the Pakistan Army provided him with equipment and then also gave him money as a reward.

With two children safely back, the remaining six people were rescued by the zipline experts, namely Mohammad Ali and his team. They were joined by Ahsan, a soldier from the Pakistan Air Force.

Mohammad Ali told reporters that when Mansehra Deputy Commissioner Bilal contacted him, he said his team could perform the rescue.

He said when they arrived at the spot, the Pakistan Army was everywhere and they provided around 80% support for the operation.

Ali says most of the children had almost fainted when he entered the stranded cable car. ‘They clung to me like children would cling to their mother,’ he said.

Ali and Ilyas attached safety harnesses to the children and hooked them to pulleys. Pakistan Army soldiers and local people standing at the end of the cables pulled the children and rescuers. There was a gradient and it took a lot of effort, said Ali.

He injured his hand during the rescue.

Ali said normally a similar operation would take only one hour but due to the darkness and difficulty in communication, it took four hours.

All the eight people rescued were given a medical examination and sent home.

At midnight, two Pakistan Army vehicles and one vehicle carrying district officials left the area.

Hundreds of people who arrived there on motorcycles which they parked along the road on a one and a half kilometer stretch also returned to their homes.