At least seven Buddhist monks, including three foreign nationals, died in a cable car accident at a Sri Lankan monastery on Wednesday, Sept 24, local police told CNN. The monks were among 13 people traveling on the cable car at the Na Uyana Monastery in central Sri Lanka, which spreads over more than 5,000 acres of forest on a mountain range, Pansiyagama Police said.
The incident took place at around 9 p.m. local time (11:30 a.m. ET) on Wednesday, according to police. Of those who were killed, three were foreign nationals from India, Russia and Romania, officers said.
CNN has reached out to the foreign ministries of those countries for comment. Images from the scene of the crash show monks standing in the forest next to the cable car’s tracks. The tracks themselves are on a steep incline, and are parallel to a huge, winding set of steps. One video shows a frayed, snapped cable, then a pool of blood next to some of the cable car’s structure. Asanga Kiriwatta, a local resident, told Reuters that “the monks were thrown all over the place” in the aftermath of the accident.
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