Italy cable car crash: Boy, 2, killed with parents pictured as brother, 5, fights for life – World News

A five year-old boy is fighting for his life in hospital in Italy after his parents, two-year-old brother and great-grandparents were all killed in an horrific cable car crash on a family holiday.

The sole survivor of the disaster lost his entire family after the tourism attraction plunged 65-ft to the ground near the top of a mountain in the country’s Western Alps, killing 14 people including two children.

The children’s devastated aunt told how she was baffled when she began suddenly receiving text message condolences on Sunday – at first assuming someone in her family must have died in a missile attack in the Israel-Gaza conflict.

Tal Peleg-Biran, 26, her husband Amit Biran, 30, who lived and worked in Italy and their son Tom Biran, two, were named by Israeli Foreign Ministry officials as victims of the crash.

The Israeli nationals died alongside the children’s great-grandparents, who had flown from Tel Aviv to visit just four days earlier for a holiday to escape the tensions at home, the Times of Israel reports.

“Yitzhak and Barbara wanted to see the great-grandchildren. Rockets were falling in Israel; they thought, ‘What can happen in Italy?’” the children’s Italy-based aunt Aya Biran said.

When her sister and brother-in-law did not pick up her frantic calls, she realised at that moment “something had happened.”

The young couple’s son, five-year-old Eitan Biran, has been named by Israeli officials as the critically injured child fighting for his life in a hospital in Turin.

His aunt is by the orphaned boy’s bedside and more relatives are preparing to fly out from Israel to join them shortly, the Foreign Ministry told reporters.

Their great-grandparents, , Barbara and Yitzhak Cohen, aged 71 and 81, had to flown out to visit them in the Piedmont region from Tel Aviv for a holiday when they took the fateful ride.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry released the names the five Israeli nationals who died in the crash on Monday, after they died riding the cable car that linksi the town of Stresa on Lake Maggiore with 4,900-ft tall Mottarone’s summit.

Amit’s sister Aya said her nephew had suffered a very complicated head injury in the crash.

“I lost my brother Amit, my sister-in-law Tal and little Tom,” Aya told Italian media, according to YNet News.

“I found out [about the tragedy] through SMS texts from friends who wrote me messages of condolence.

“I did not know at first what had happened and at first I thought another missile had fallen in Israel,” she continued.

” So, I called my brother and he did not answer, neither did my sister-in-law. At that moment I realised something had happened.”

According to the Times of Israel, Aya said the children’s grandparents had travelled to Italy in hopes of getting away from deadly fighting in Israel and Gaza – only to lose their lives in the crash.

Stresa officials say the cable car the family was travelling in fell to the ground and rolled several times before it was stopped by trees, where rescuers found its mangled wreck on the steep slope on Sunday.

The brothers were rushed to hospital where, tragically, Tom died after several attempts to restart his heart failed, hospital officials told local media.

Israeli reports said the family lived in the city of Fabia in the northern Italian province of Lombardy, where Amit studied medicine and worked as a security guard at a local Jewish school.

The president of the nearby Milan Jewish community, Milo Hatzbani, told Israel’s Army Radio that the accident was “a great disaster.”

“I know the father well, I spoke to him last Friday. He told me he decided to go for a trip with the children and with the grandparents who came from Israel,” Hatzbani said.

The Israeli embassy in Rome told media officials were working with the family to bring the family’s bodies to Israel in the coming days.

“We are devastated, in pain,” Marcella Severino, Stresa’s mayor told local media, as Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi offered his condolences to the families of the victims.

Italian investigators have opened a probe into the cause of the crash, which the mayor said is believed to have been caused by one of the cables breaking.

The mayor said people hiking nearby heard a loud hiss just before the carriage plummeted to the ground.

Severino said that some of the victims had been found trapped inside the car, with others thrown into the woods.

While coroners are still working to identify all of the victims, two couples are among those reported to have been among the tragic death toll, which included a nine-year-old boy who died after being airlifted to hospital.

Roberta Pistolato, a doctor working on the frontline of Italy’s battle against Covid, died as she celebrated her 40th birthday with her boyfriend Angelo Gasparro, 45.

About an hour before the disaster, Ms Pistolato sent a final text message to her sister, saying: “We’re getting on the cable car.”

Engaged couple Silvia Malnati 27, and Alessandro Merlo, 29, were also killed.

Italy’s alpine rescue service said a call had first come just after midday Sunday reporting that the cable car was lying “crumpled” in the woods.

The Stresa-Mottarone lift popular with tourists for its 20-minute journey offering panoramic views of picturesque Maggiore Lake.

It had only recently re-opened following the gradual lifting of coronavirus restrictions.

The attraction first opened in August 1970 after almost three years of works to replace a cog railway, its website said.

The dual cable system is split into two sections, just over two kilometres between Stresa and Alpino and another three kilometres between Alpino and Mottarone.

It consist of two cars – in alternate directions – with each one carrying up to 40 passengers, it added.

The mayor said maintenance works, including changing the cables, had been carried out in recent years.