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
UN peacekeepers say Israeli forces fired on them in southern Lebanon
- “Yesterday, peacekeepers in vehicles patrolling the Blue Line were fired upon by IDF soldiers in a Merkava tank,” UNIFIL said
- It said that both the peacekeepers and the Israeli tank were in Lebanese territory
BEIRUT: The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon said Wednesday that Israeli forces fired on its peacekeepers a day earlier in the country’s south, urging Israel’s army to “cease aggressive behavior.”
It is the latest such incident reported by the peacekeepers in southern Lebanon, where UNIFIL acts as a buffer between Israel and Lebanon and has been working with Lebanon’s army to support a year-old truce between Israel and militant group Hezbollah.
“Yesterday, peacekeepers in vehicles patrolling the Blue Line were fired upon by IDF (Israeli army) soldiers in a Merkava tank,” a UNIFIL statement said, referring to the de facto border.
“One ten-round burst of machine-gun fire was fired above the convoy, and four further ten-round bursts were fired nearby,” the statement said.
It said that both the peacekeepers and the Israeli tank were in Lebanese territory at the time of the incident and that the Israeli military had been informed of the location and timing of the peacekeeping patrol in advance.
“Peacekeepers asked the IDF to stop firing through UNIFIL’s liaison channels... Fortunately, no one was injured,” it said.
Last month UNIFIL said Israeli soldiers shot at its troops in the south, while Israel’s military said it mistook blue helmets for “suspects” and fired warning shots.
In October, UNIFIL said one of its members was wounded by an Israeli grenade dropped near a UN position in the country’s south, the third incident of its kind in just over a month.
“Attacks on or near peacekeepers are serious violations of (UN) Security Council Resolution 1701,” UNIFIL said on Wednesday, referring to the 2006 resolution that formed the basis of the November 2024 truce.
“We call on the IDF to cease aggressive behavior and attacks on or near peacekeepers working to rebuild stability along the Blue Line,” the peacekeepers said.
Israel carries out regular attacks on Lebanon despite the truce, usually saying it is targeting sites and operatives belonging to Hezbollah, which it accuses of rearming.
It has also kept troops in five south Lebanon areas it deems strategic.
On Saturday, a UN Security Council delegation visiting Lebanon urged all parties to uphold the ceasefire.
It emphasized that the “safety of peacekeepers must be respected and that they must never be targeted,” after gunmen on mopeds attacked UNIFIL personnel last week.
