Rome Newsroom, May 25, 2021 / 05:10 am
Pope Francis said on Tuesday that he was praying for the five-year-old survivor of a cable car accident in northern Italy, as well as the 14 people killed in the disaster.
A telegram released May 25 said that the pope had learned of the incident “with great sorrow” and wished to express his heartfelt condolences to the victims’ families.
It said he was saddened that “so many lives [were] tragically cut short while immersed in the wonder of creation” and would be praying for those killed, their relatives, and “little Eitan,” the accident’s sole survivor.
The pope said that he would be following the condition of Eitan’s health “with concern,” as he recuperates in hospital with leg and head injuries.
The cable car accident occurred a day after Italy allowed the reopening of ski lifts and cable cars after months of closure due to the country’s ongoing COVID-19 restrictions.
The cable car had been carrying visitors from the town of Stresa up the Mottarone mountain on the afternoon of May 23 when it broke, plunging around 65 feet before it hit the mountain side.
The Italian news agency ANSA reported that the cable car’s occupants were from five families, including one from Israel.
Israel’s foreign ministry named the five Israelis who died as Eitan’s father Amit Biran, 30, his mother Tal Peleg-Biran, 26, and his brother Tom Biran, aged two, as well as Peleg-Biran’s grandparents, Barbara Cohen Konisky, 70, and Yitzhak Cohen, 82.
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