ISTANBUL: One person was killed and seven injured Friday when a cable car pod in southern Turkiye hit a pole and burst open, sending the passengers plummeting to the mountainside below, officials and local media said. Scores of other people were left stranded late into the night after the entire cable car system came to a standstill.
Two children were among the injured in the accident at the Tunektepe cable car just outside the Mediterranean city of Antalya at about 6 p.m. during the busy Eid Al-Fitr holiday, the state-run Anadolu Agency said.
Anadolu identified the deceased as a 54-year-old Turkish man, 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. The rescue operation involved more than 160 first responders including air crews from the Coast Guard and mountaineering teams from different parts of Turkiye, the minister posted on social media site X.
Some 184 other passengers were trapped in 25 other cable car pods dozens of feet (tens of meters) above the ground as engineers tried to restart the system, Antalya Mayor Muhittin Bocek said in a statement. Helicopters with night vision imaging were heading to the site, he said.
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 Turkiye 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 618-meter (2,010-feet) 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.
Cable car accident in Turkiye sends 1 passenger to his death and injures 7, with scores stranded
https://arab.news/jxt7m
Cable car accident in Turkiye sends 1 passenger to his death and injures 7, with scores stranded
US Congress moves toward repeal of tough ‘Caesar’ sanctions on Syria
- The Caesar sanctions, the most stringent restrictions, can only be removed permanently by an act of Congress
- Several Saudi Arabian firms are planning billion-dollar investments in the country as part of Riyadh’s drive to support the country’s recovery
WASHINGTON: A set of tough US sanctions imposed on Syria under its former leader Bashar Assad could be lifted within weeks, after their repeal was included in a sweeping defense policy bill unveiled during the weekend and due for votes in Congress within days. The Senate and House of Representatives included repeal of the so-called Caesar sanctions, a move seen as key to Syria’s economic recovery, in a compromise version of the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, a sweeping annual defense policy bill that was unveiled late on Sunday.
The provision in the 3,000-page defense bill repeals the 2019 Caesar Act and requires regular reports from the White House certifying that Syria’s government is fighting Daesh militants, upholding religious and ethnic minority rights within the country and not taking unilateral, unprovoked military action against its neighbors, including Israel.
HIGHLIGHTS
• Sanctions relief seen as key to Syrian economic revival
• US bill including repeal expected to pass within weeks
• Trump has temporarily lifted sanctions, Congress must approve permanent relief
The NDAA is expected to pass by the end of this year and be signed into law by President Donald Trump, whose fellow Republicans hold majorities in both the House and Senate and lead the committees that wrote the bill. Lifting the sanctions is considered a key to the success of Syria’s new government. Several Saudi Arabian firms are planning billion-dollar investments in the country as part of Riyadh’s drive to support the country’s recovery. The US sanctions have been a significant obstacle to Syria’s economic revival.
Trump announced plans to lift all sanctions on Syria during a meeting with Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa in May, and his administration has suspended them temporarily. However, the Caesar sanctions, the most stringent restrictions, can only be removed permanently by an act of Congress.
The 2019 Caesar Act imposed wide-ranging sanctions on Syria targeting individuals, companies and institutions linked to Assad, who was the president of Syria from 2000 until his ouster in 2024 by rebel forces led by Sharaa. Syrian central bank Governor AbdulKader Husrieh told Reuters last week that the country’s economy was growing faster than had been expected. He described the repeal of many US sanctions as “a miracle.”
The sanctions are named after a Syrian military photographer, code-named “Caesar,” who smuggled out thousands of gruesome photos documenting torture and war crimes by Assad’s government.
