At least seven Buddhist monks, together with three overseas nationals, died in a cable car accident at a Sri Lankan monastery on Wednesday, native police instructed NCS.
The monks have been amongst 13 folks touring on the cable car at the Na Uyana Monastery in central Sri Lanka, which spreads over greater than 5,000 acres of forest on a mountain vary, Pansiyagama Police stated.
The incident came about at round 9 p.m. native time (11:30 a.m. ET) on Wednesday, based on police. Of those that have been killed, three have been overseas nationals from India, Russia and Romania, officers stated.
NCS has reached out to the overseas ministries of these nations for remark.
Images from the scene of the crash present monks standing in the forest subsequent to the cable car’s tracks. The tracks themselves are on a steep incline, and are parallel to an enormous, winding set of steps.
One video exhibits a frayed, snapped cable, then a pool of blood subsequent to a few of the cable car’s construction.
Asanga Kiriwatta, a neighborhood resident, instructed Reuters that “the monks were thrown all over the place” in the aftermath of the accident.
“We rescued them with great difficulty. There were very few people around at that time,” he stated.
Vijitha Herath, Sri Lanka’s overseas minister, stated that he was “shocked by the loss of venerable monks” in the “tragic accident,” providing his condolences to these affected in a post on X.
According to Na Uyana Monastery’s web site, the advanced is likely one of the oldest Buddhist forest monasteries in the nation, courting again to the third century BCE.
More than 200 monks dwell in the advanced, the web site says, whereas guests are in a position to take part in meditation retreats and different non secular occasions.