Pakistani army has rescued two children out of a total of eight trapped in a cable car cabin, which came to rest over a canyon when one of the cables holding it up broke this morning. The rescue operation is hampered by the strong winds blowing in the area.

Seven students and a teacher became trapped in the elevator around 7:00 a.m. local time (5:00 a.m. Greek time) while on their way to school in a remote mountainous area in Batagram, about 200 kilometers north of Islamabad, officials said.

Two children have now been rescued, a rescue services spokesman and a district official said. No further details are available at this time.

The cable car stopped midway over a 274-meter-deep canyon when one of the two cables holding it brokerescue official Sharik Khattak told Reuters.

The rescue operation is complicated not only by strong winds in the area, but also by the risk that the helicopter’s propellers could further destabilize the elevator, he explained.

“Our situation is precarious, for God’s sake do something,” Gulfaraz, a 20-year-old man in the cable car cabin, told local TV station Geo News by phone, calling on authorities to rescue them as soon as possible. He said the rest of the students are between 10 and 15 years old and one of them fainted due to the heat and fear.

Rescue efforts froze the country, with Pakistanis watching on televisions, as local media broadcast footage of a rescue worker hanging from a helicopter rope near the cable car’s small cabin, with those inside huddled together.

Crowds of villagers gathered on the steep slope anxiously watching the operation.

Muzaffar Khan, an official of the district administration in Batagram, clarified that seven students and one teacher were in the lift and not six students and two teachers as previously reported.