ROME (AP) – A cable car taking visitors to a mountaintop view of some of northern Italy’s most picturesque lakes plummeted to the ground Sunday and then tumbled down the slope, killing at least 13 people and sending two children to the hospital in serious condition, authorities said.
Stesa Mayor Marcella Severino said it appeared that a cable broke, sending the car careening until it hit a pilon and then fell to the ground. At that point, the car overturned “two or three times before hitting some trees,” she said. Some of those who died were thrown from the cabin.
Images from the site showed the crumpled car in a clearing of a thick patch of pine trees near the summit of the Mottarone peak overlooking Lake Maggiore.
“It was a terrible, terrible scene,” Severino told Italy’s SkyTG24. She said that in addition to the two children, a third person was injured.
The plunge on the the Stresa-Mottarone line happened about 100 meters (yards) before the final pilon, in a spot where the cables were particularly high off the ground, said Walter Milan, spokesman for Italy’s Alpine rescue service.