The owner and operator of a Pakistan cable car that was stranded in high winds above a ravine with children on board have been arrested, according to police.
Mohammad Sheraz Khan, an officer at a district police station in Pakistan's northwest, said the two men had been detained after the boys were brought to safety, but did not give details of the accusations.
Rescuers saved all eight people on board yesterday after they spent several hours swaying precariously at at angle 274m above ground.
They had been coming down from their mountain homes in Jhangri to a school in Battangi, comprising two villages in the remote Allai valley, when the accident happened.
The journey by cable car usually takes just a matter of minutes, whereas travelling along the rough roads and tracks takes hours.
The high-risk rescue operation was completed as night fell.
The boys - aged between 10 and 16 - had been taking the cable car to school as usual, with three due to collect their end-of-year exam results, when two of the three cables snapped.
Today, the three students walked two hours to school along a hilly path to find out they had passed their exams before they sought further medical check-ups.
"When this incident happened, I forgot everything. All I remembered at that time was my mother and God," said 18-year-old Niaz Muhammad from Pashto village.
Some of the passengers said that several times they lost hope in being rescued and had considered leaping from the cable car.
"Some of the children were so frustrated and were considering to jump down, but the elder passenger gave us confidence," 15-year-old Rizwan Ullah said.
"When the cable car was twisting, we were terrified and we started reciting the Koran and gave confidence to each other not to jump down."
Helicopters flew repeated sorties over the cable car throughout the afternoon as they planned the rescue mission.
At one point an airman was lowered to deliver food and water, but the air pressure from the helicopter caused him to collide with a rope holding the cable car, causing it to twist and shake.
"When the helicopter arrived and left without rescue we lost hope," said 25-year-old Gul Faraz, a shopkeeper who was in the cable car.
"During the whole process we thought we would die. There were some times when we thought we would not survive."
Residents used mosque loudspeakers to alert neighbourhood officials of the emergency, and hundreds of people gathered on both sides of the ravine, hours away from any sizeable town, to watch the drama unfold.
The daring rescue finally began at dusk with a helicopter plucking a child from the chairlift but the chopper was forced back to base as bad weather closed in and night fell.
Then, commandos from Pakistan's Special Service Group (SSG), known as the Maroon Berets, and local experts used the cable keeping the gondola from plunging into the valley as a zipline to rescue the rest of those stranded.
The two adults were the last to be brought to safety.
Pakistan's caretaker Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar called the rescuers "heroes of the nation".
"Great team work by the military, rescue departments, district administration as well as the local people," he wrote on social media.
Eighteen-year-old Muhammad, who has just started his final year of high school, feels as if he has been given "a second life".
"It was the most terrifying time of my life. I forgot everything but my mother. I thought only of my mother," he said.
