British siblings among tourists killed in Italian cable car crash

Three tourists, including a brother and sister from Britain, were among four people who were killed when a mountain cable car plunged into a ravine south of Naples, an Italian official said.

An Arab woman with Israeli citizenship was the third foreign victim to be identified following Friday's accident, said Marco De Rosa, a spokesperson for the mayor of Vico Equense.

The fourth victim was the Italian driver of the cable car. A fifth tourist, said to be the brother of the Israeli victim, is in a stable but critical condition at a Naples hospital, officials said.

Initial reports suggested that a traction cable may have snapped as the cable car ascended Monte Faito, in the town of Castellammare di Stabia. The cable car plunged into a ravine after stopping very close to the station at the top of the peak, at around 1050m.

Sixteen passengers were helped out of another cable car that was stuck mid-air near the foot of the mountain following the incident.

The accident happened just a week after the cable car, which is popular for its views of Mount Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples, reopened for the season. It averages around 110,000 visitors each year.

The emergency services, including Italy’s alpine rescue, more than 50 firefighters, police and civil protection personnel, worked into the evening in severe weather conditions, with fog and strong winds making rescue operations difficult.

"The traction cable broke. The emergency brake downstream worked, but evidently not the one on the cabin that was entering the station," Luigi Vicinanza, the mayor of Castellammare di Stabia said. He added that there had been regular safety checks on the cable car line, which runs 3km from the town to the top of the mountain.

Local prosecutors have opened an investigation into possible manslaughter, which will involve an inspection of the cable stations, the pylons, the two cabins and the cable, officials said.

The company running the service, the EAV public transport firm, said the seasonal cable car had reopened with all the required safety conditions.

"The reopening had taken place a week ago after three months of tests every day, day and night," said EAV President Umberto De Gregorio. "This is something inexplicable."

De Gregorio said technical experts believed there was no connection between the severe weather and the cause of the crash. "There is an automatic system. When the wind exceeds a certain level, the cable car stops automatically," he said.

The Monte Faito cable car opened in 1952. Four people died in 1960 when a pylon broke.

Italy has recorded two similar fatal accidents involving cable cars in recent years.

A cable car crash in May 2021 in northern Italy killed 14 people, including six Israelis, among them a family of four. In 1998, a low-flying US military jet cut through the cable of a ski lift in Cavalese, in the Dolomites, killing 20 people.