Italy cable car accident: At least 14 dead near Lake Maggiore including one child
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At least 14 people, including one child, have died after a cable car fell to the ground on a mountainside in the north of Italy, emergency responders have said.
The Italian government launched an investigation to determine the causes of the crash on the Stresa-Mottarone line in the Piedmont region.
A second child, thought to be around five years old, remains in hospital after the incident near the summit of the Stresa-Mottarone line in the Piedmont region, Italy’s Alpine rescue service said.
Walter Milan, a spokesman for the service, told Italian media it was a “very serious accident” with the car falling from a considerable height to the woods below.
Mr Milan said that 15 people had been travelling in the cable car at the time of the accident.
Several foreign nationals, including three Israelis and an Iran-born man, were killed along with Italian citizens in the cable car crash, according to local media reports.
Local police told Italy’s Adnkronos news agency the cab fell after a supporting cable on the line snapped.
Italy’s infrastructure minister, Enrico Giovannini, followed the rescue effort, which involved three helicopters, fire crews, police and mountain rescue services.
“We are trying to understand what has happened, but it is a truly terrible tragedy,” the minister said in a statement.
Cable line renovated in 2016, with checks as recently as 2020
The Stresa-Mottarone cable line was subject to major renovations in August 2016, with several checks taking place since, the Italian Ministry of Sustainable Infrastructures and Mobility (Mims) said.
After checks in 2017, the line was then inspected between November and December 2020, Mims said.
Magnetoscopic checks, which can detect problems at the surface level and slightly below, were carried out last November before a visual inspection by a specialist company in December.
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