One dead and seven injured as cable car bursts open in Turkey, sending passengers plummeting to ground
13 April 2024, 00:10 | Updated: 13 April 2024, 00:18
At least one person is dead and almost 200 are stranded mid-air after a cable car pod burst open, sending passengers plummeting to the ground.
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A further seven were also injured as many passengers remained stranded late into the night at the Tunektepe cable car outside the Mediterranean city of Antalya in Turkey. The entire cable car system is now at a standstill.
Among the injured are two children following the incident at about 6pm during the busy Eid al-Fitr holiday, the state-run Anadolu Agency said.
Anadolu identified the dead man as a 54-year-old, and said six Turkish citizens and one Kyrgyz national were injured.
Five of the injured were ferried off the mountain by helicopter and efforts continued to remove the other two injured people, interior minister Ali Yerlikaya said three hours after the accident.
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The rescue operation involved more than 160 first responders including air crews from the Coast Guard and mountaineering teams from different parts of Turkey, the minister posted on social media site X.
Some 184 other passengers were trapped in 25 other cable car pods dozens of feet above the ground as engineers tried to restart the system, Antalya Mayor Muhittin Bocek said. Helicopters with night vision imaging were heading to the site.
Search and rescue agency AFAD later said 49 people had been rescued from the suspended pods, leaving 135 still stranded close to midnight - about six hours after the accident.
Images in Turkish media showed the battered car swaying from dislodged cables on the side of the rocky mountain as medics tended the wounded.
Friday was the final day of a three-day public holiday in Turkey marking the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which sees families flock to coastal resorts.
The cable car carries tourists from Konyaalti beach to a restaurant and viewing platform at the summit of the 618m (2,010ft) Tunektepe peak. It is run by Antalya Metropolitan Municipality.
Antalya Chief Public Prosecutor's Office has launched an investigation. An expert commission including mechanical and electrical engineers and health and safety experts was assigned to determine the cause of the incident.
