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A British woman was among four people who died when a cable car crashed to the ground near Naples in southern Italy on Thursday.
Prosecutors in Torre Annunziata have opened an investigation into possible manslaughter after the accident at Monte Faito, a peak about 28 miles (45km) south-east of Naples.
Police confirmed two of the other victims were an Israeli woman and the Italian driver of the cable car. They would not confirm reports in the Italian press that the fourth victim was British.
Another man, reported in the Italian press to be Israeli, was hospitalised in Ponticelli with severe injuries. The hospital said the man, who was intubated and had fractures to his lower limbs, remained “stable in the seriousness” of his injuries and would undergo further tests on Friday morning.
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, head of the Campania region around Naples, told RAI that rescue operations were hampered by fog and strong winds, which on Thursday had reached 100 km/h.
Residents heard a loud bang before the cable car fell, according to news 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.
