More than 40 people still stranded the day after a deadly cable car accident in Turkey

ISTANBUL (AP) — More than 40 people remained stranded in cable cars high above a mountain in southern Turkey on Saturday, 19 hours after one pod hit a pole and burst open, killing one person and injuring seven.

The accident occurred around 5:30 p.m. Friday at the Tunektepe cable car just outside the Mediterranean city of Antalya during the busy Eid al-Fitr holiday. Operations to rescue the stranded people continued throughout the night.

“128 citizens in 16 pods have been rescued under difficult conditions,” Okay Memis, director of the Turkish search and rescue agency AFAD, told media Saturday morning. “The rescue of 43 others in eight remaining pods is ongoing.”

He added that rescuers hope to complete rescue operations before dark.

The casualties occurred when a pod hit a pole and burst open, sending its passengers plummeting to the mountainside below, officials said.

State-run Anadolu Agency identified the deceased as a 54-year-old Turkish man. The injured were six Turkish citizens and one Kyrgyz national, including two children. They were rescued by Coast Guard helicopters.

Images in Turkish media showed the battered car swaying from dislodged cables on the side of the rocky mountain as medics tended the wounded.

A total of 543 first responders and seven helicopters are involved in the rescue operations, including teams from AFAD, the Coast Guard, firefighting teams and mountaineering teams from different parts of Turkey, officials said.

Friday was the final day of a three-day public holiday in Turkey marking the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which sees families flock to coastal resorts.

The cable car carries tourists from Konyaalti beach to a restaurant and viewing platform at the summit of the 618-meter (2,010-foot) Tunektepe peak. It is run by Antalya Metropolitan Municipality. The cable car line was completed in 2017 and receives a major inspection around the beginning of the year, as well as routine inspections throughout the year.

Antalya Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office has launched an investigation. An expert commission including mechanical and electrical engineers and health and safety experts was assigned to determine the cause of the incident.

Rescue and emergency team members work with passengers of a cable car transportation system outside Antalya, southern Turkey, Friday, April 12, 2024. At least one person was killed and several injured Friday when a cable car pod in southern Turkey hit a pole and burst open, sending the passengers plummeting to the mountainside below, officials and local media said. Scores of other people were left stranded late into the night after the entire cable car system came to a standstill. (Dia Images via AP)

Rescue and emergency team members work with passengers of a cable car transportation system outside Antalya, southern Turkey, Friday, April 12, 2024. At least one person was killed and several injured Friday when a cable car pod in southern Turkey hit a pole and burst open, sending the passengers plummeting to the mountainside below, officials and local media said. Scores of other people were left stranded late into the night after the entire cable car system came to a standstill. (Dia Images via AP)

Rescue and emergency team members work with passengers of a cable car transportation system outside Antalya, southern Turkey, Friday, April 12, 2024. At least one person was killed and several injured Friday when a cable car pod in southern Turkey hit a pole and burst open, sending the passengers plummeting to the mountainside below, officials and local media said. Scores of other people were left stranded late into the night after the entire cable car system came to a standstill. (Dia Images via AP)

A rescue team work with passengers of a cable car transportation systems outside Antalya, southern Turkey, April, Friday 12, 2024. A cable car disaster in southern Turkey left one person dead and seven injured over the busy Eid al-Fitr public holiday on Friday, local media reported. (IHA via AP)

A severely damaged cabin of a cable car transportation system is seen outside Antalya, southern Turkey, Friday, April 12, 2024. At least one person was killed and several injured Friday when a cable car pod in southern Turkey hit a pole and burst open, sending the passengers plummeting to the mountainside below, officials and local media said. Scores of other people were left stranded late into the night after the entire cable car system came to a standstill. (Dia Images via AP)

Rescue and emergency team members work with passengers of a cable car transportation system outside Antalya, southern Turkey, Friday, April 12, 2024. At least one person was killed and several injured Friday when a cable car pod in southern Turkey hit a pole and burst open, sending the passengers plummeting to the mountainside below, officials and local media said. Scores of other people were left stranded late into the night after the entire cable car system came to a standstill. (Dia Images via AP)

BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — Democratic state Sen. Timothy Kennedy won a special election Tuesday for the New York congressional seat vacated by Democrat Brian Higgins.

Kennedy defeated Republican Gary Dickson for the upstate New York seat, helped by a 2-to-1 Democratic registration advantage in the district, which includes Buffalo, Niagara Falls and several suburbs.

Kennedy has been in the state Senate since 2011. Describing Washington as “chaotic and dysfunctional,” he said he would focus in Congress on reproductive rights, immigration and stronger gun laws like those passed in New York after a 2022 mass shooting at a Buffalo supermarket.

“New York has been a bulwark against Donald Trump’s extremist MAGA agenda that has infected our politics and our nation’s capital,” he said during the campaign. “The MAGA extremists have made the House of Representatives a laughingstock.”

Registration wasn’t Kennedy’s only advantage. The Democrat raised $1.7 million as of April 10, compared with Dickson’s $35,430 total, according to campaign finance reports. Kennedy spent just over $1 million in the off-season election, compared with $21,000 for Dickson as the candidates worked to remind voters to go to the polls.

Kennedy will serve in Congress for the rest of the year. He is on the ballot, along with Republican attorney Anthony Marecki, for the general election. On Tuesday, former town supervisor Nate McMurray, who planned to challenge Kennedy in a Democratic primary in June, said in a social media post that elections officials had removed him from the ballot because of insufficient signatures.

Earlier this year, the GOP’s slim House majority was narrowed in a closely contested Long Island-area special election that followed New York Republican George Santos’ expulsion from Congress. That race, won by Democrat Tom Suozzi, was viewed as a test of the parties’ general election strategies on immigration and abortion.

Dickson, a retired FBI special agent, acknowledged the challenges of running in the upstate district when he announced his candidacy at the end of February, saying he was in the race to give voters a choice. He said he supports Trump as the Republican nominee for president, while describing his own politics as “more towards the center.”

Voting took place with Trump on trial in New York City in the first criminal trial of a former American president and the first of four prosecutions of Trump to reach a jury.

FILE - Sen. Timothy Kennedy, D-Buffalo, left, speaks in the Senate Chamber of the state Capitol, Feb. 6, 2017, in Albany, N.Y. In a special election Tuesday, April 30, voters in upstate New York's 26th Congressional District will choose between Kennedy, a Democrat, and Gary Dickson, the first Republican elected as a town supervisor in the Buffalo suburb of West Seneca in 50 years. (AP Photo/Hans Pennink, File)

FILE - West Seneca Town Supervisor Gary Dickson, who is on the Republican ticket for the 26th Congressional District special election, speaks while on his campaign trail, April 25, 2024, in Buffalo, N.Y. In a special election, Tuesday, April 30, voters in upstate New York's 26th Congressional District will choose between state Sen. Timothy Kennedy, a Democrat, and Dickson, the first Republican elected as a town supervisor in the Buffalo suburb of West Seneca in 50 years. (AP Photo/Jeffrey T. Barnes, File)