Two British tourists were among four people who died when a cable car crashed to the ground near Naples in southern Italy.
Prosecutors in Torre Annunziata have opened an investigation into possible manslaughter charges after the crash on Thursday at Monte Faito, a peak about 28 miles (45km) south-east of Naples.
The British victims were identified as Margaret Elaine Winn, 58, and Graeme Derek Winn, 65, the Italian news agency Ansa reported.
The other victims were Janan Suliman, a 25-year-old Arab woman with Israeli citizenship. Her brother, Thaeb Suliman, 23, was hospitalised in Ponticelli with severe injuries.
The hospital said on Friday morning that he remained “stable in the seriousness” of his injuries and would undergo further tests.
The fourth person who died was the cable car operator, named locally as Carmine Parlato.
The cable car service operated two cabins. The one that crashed had been travelling up the mountain, while 16 people were helped out of the cabin that had been making its way down and stopped in mid-air close to the foot of the peak.
They were evacuated one by one, using harnesses, footage on RAI public television and other media showed.
Italian media reported that one of the cables supporting the cabin had snapped. The cable car service, which had opened for the spring and summer season 10 days previously, underwent a maintenance check a week ago, according to reports on Friday.
“The cabin at the top has crashed,” Umberto De Gregorio, the chair of EAV, the public transport company that runs the cable car service, wrote on Facebook, calling it “a tragedy”.
Vincenzo De Luca, the head of the Campania region around Naples, told RAI that rescue operations were hampered by fog and strong winds, which on Thursday had reached 60mph (100km/h).
People heard a loud bang before the cable car fell, according to reports.
“There was a truly severe weather situation, therefore I can imagine what could have happened at 1,500 metres above sea level,” De Luca said. “But, I repeat, technical checks must be done with the utmost rigour.”
The last deadly cable car crash in Italy was in 2021, when 14 people were killed when a cable car linking the resort town of Stresa and the Mottarone mountain in the Piedmont region plummeted into the woods near Lake Maggiore.
Giorgia Meloni, the prime minister, was informed of Thursday’s crash during a summit in Washington with the US president, Donald Trump. She expressed her “deepest condolences” to the families of those killed and injured.
The Faito cable car service was launched in 1952. In 1960 four people, including a nine-year-old child, died after a pylon broke, Napoli Today reported.
Source: theguardian.com
