Teenage boys rescued from a stranded cable car that dangled over a deep Pakistan ravine have described the “terrifying” 12 hours, while the owner and operator have been arrested.

Warning: This story contains details that may disturb some readers

Six students were among eight people rescued on Tuesday by military helicopters and local zip-line experts as night fell in the remote Allai valley in north-western Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

A local police officer on Wednesday said the owner and operator of the cable car had been arrested. 

Mohammad Sheraz Khan, an officer at a district police station in Pakistan’s north-west, said two men had been detained after the children were rescued, but did not give details of the charges.

The students had been taking the cable to school as usual, with three due to collect their end-of-year exam results, when two of the three cables snapped.

On Wednesday the three students walked two hours to school along a hilly path to find out they had passed their exams, before they sought further medical check-ups.

Some of the passengers said there were several moments when they lost hope in ever being rescued, and had considered leaping from the chairlift.

“Some of the children were so frustrated and were considering to jump down, but the elder passenger gave us confidence,” Rizwan Ullah, 15, said.

Helicopters repeatedly circled above the cable car throughout the afternoon as they planned the rescue mission.

At one point an airman was lowered to deliver food and water, but the air pressure from the helicopter caused him to collide with a rope holding the cable car, causing it to twist and shake.

“When the helicopter arrived and left without rescue we lost hope,” said 25-year-old Gul Faraz, a shopkeeper who was in the cable car.

Rescuers dubbed ‘heroes of the nation’

Residents used mosque loudspeakers to alert neighbourhood officials of the emergency, and hundreds of people gathered on both sides of the ravine, hours away from any sizeable town, to watch the incident unfold.

Syed Hammad Haider, a senior Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provincial official, said the gondola was hanging up to 365 metres above the ground.

The daring rescue finally began at dusk with a helicopter plucking a child from the chairlift.

The chopper was then forced back to base as bad weather closed in and night fell.

Commandos from Pakistan’s Special Service Group (SSG), known as the Maroon Berets, and local experts then used the cable keeping the gondola from plunging into the valley as a zip-line to rescue the rest of those stranded.

The oldest in the cable car were the last to be brought to safety.

Pakistan’s caretaker Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar called the rescuers “heroes of the nation”.

“Great team work by the military, rescue departments, district administration as well as the local people,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

‘I thought of my mother’

Muhammad, 18, who has just started his final year of high school, feels as if he has been given “a second life”.

“It was the most terrifying time of my life. I forgot everything but my mother. I thought only of my mother,” he said. 

“It was very emotional for both of us.”

Cable cars that carry passengers, and sometimes even cars, are common across the northern areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and Gilgit-Baltistan, and are vital in connecting villages and towns in areas where roads cannot be built.

The prime minister has ordered them closed throughout the province for a week while safety inspections are carried out.

But Muhammad, like others in the village, said despite his ordeal, he has no option but to return to using the cable car.

AP/Reuters