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Tourists, Trapped in Alps Cable Car Overnight, Rescued

“There’s nothing fundamentally to fear”, he added. They alerted authorities and French and Italian mountain rescue specialists were brought by helicopter to evacuate passengers.

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The cable cars stopped when cables became tangled in high winds, said a report.

The cable cars got stuck at 3:40pm (1340 GMT) Thursday at an altitude of 3,800 metres (12,500 feet) in the French Alps after an unexplained technical incident, initially with 110 people on board.

The Vallee Blanche Cable Car, used by a 500,000 sightseers a year, connects the famed Aiguille du Midi peak in France to the Punta Helbronner in Italy and normally takes 30-35 minutes.

Early Thursday, helicopters rescued 65 of the 110 initial passengers trapped in the Chamonix region near Mont Blanc, a local government official with knowledge of the operation told CNN.

More than 30 tourists were trapped throughout the night in cable cars thousands of meters up in the French Alps on Thursday.

Mathieu Dechavanne, the head of the cable vehicle business, said it seemed that cables had crossed around “for unexplained reasons” but likely as a result of powerful gusts of wind.

“The helicopter rescue failed because the fog moved in, so we had to just wait and then they decided they could belay us safely to the ground, and we walked up the glacier to the hut”, she said upon arrival in Courmayeur.

Specialist rescuers spent the night in some of the cabins, including the one where the 10-year-old child was to try to reassure the tourists. If that fails rescuers will have no option but to try and rescue the stranded holiday-makers by helicopter, officials quoted by French media say.

We were two and half hours in the cab locked under the sun.

Those left behind overnight have been given food and blankets, and are also accompanied by first aid workers, according to police.

One of those, Frédéric Maurer, 49, who has already been taken to safety by the Mountain Rescue Service, said he and his family had been waiting in the auto for two and a half hours.

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The cable cars offer tourists a panoramic view of Mont Blanc.

110 people stuck on cable cars in French Alps