British woman among four killed in Italian cable car crash

Israeli woman and Italian driver of cable car also died in crash near Naples and reports say fourth victim also British

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. Sixteen passengers were helped out of a cabin that stopped in mid-air near the foot of the mountain. They were evacuated one by one, using harnesses, footage on RAI public television and other media showed. Several Italian media reports said 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, the head of the Campania region around Naples, told RAI that rescue operations had been hampered by fog and high winds. 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.