Tourists rescued after spending night trapped in cable cars 3,000 metres above the French Alps

Poor visibility thwarted an intial rescue attempt on Thursday night, leaving at least 33 people stranded

A rescue operation has freed 33 people who spent the night trapped in cable cars in the French alps.

The tourists were part of a larger group who were left suspended at an altitude of 3,800m, above Mont Blanc, when the cars' cables became tangled and the cabins stopped moving on Thursday night.

Mathieu Dechavanne, CEO of the Mont-Blanc Company which manages the machine, said the cables became tangled for "unexplained reasons" but speculated it was probably due to high winds.

A team of engineers worked from dawn to untangle the wires and managed to restart the cable car early on Friday morning.

The cable cars "restarted five minutes ago, the last cable, which was blocking the system, was untangled," Mr Dechavanne told AFP just before 8am (0600 GMT).

110 people were onboard when the cable car stopped, but 77 were rescued by helicopter before nightfall on Thursday, when poor visibility made it too dangerous for rescuers to continue.

Local officials said the operation resumed on Friday morning at 06:30 local time (04:30 GMT).

Technicians untangled the cable cars by loosening the cables holding them. If it had not been possible to repair the cable cars, people would have been rescued by helicopter, local officials quoted by French media said.

Water, energy bars and survival blankets were distributed to those who remained in the cars overnight.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said first aid workers also spent the night in the cable cars with the trapped group, which reportedly included a 10-year-old child.

"We were in touch with them all night. The people were cold but there was no vital distress," said the commander of the rescue operation Stéphane Bozon, from the Chamonix Gendarmerie.

French, Italian, and Swiss teams equipped with three helicopters took part in the large rescue operation.

The cable car journey usually takes around 35 minutes and connects the Aiguille de Midi peak in France, at 3,842m (12,605ft), to Pointe Helbronner in Italy, at 3,462m (11,358ft), offering a panoramic view of Mont Blanc during the journey. It attracts around half a million tourists each year.

Frédéric Maurer, 49, one of the first passengers to be rescued along with his daughter and son on Thursday, said, “We were in the cab for two-and-a-half hours locked under the sun.

"We had just started from flagship station Helbronner on the Italian side, when everything froze."

On Friday morning Mr Cazeneuve congratulated all the teams involved in the operation.

He confirmed the rescue had been completed and said everyone who spent the night in a cable car was now safe.

He paid tribute to the rescue team and emergency services "for the success of this operation in particularly difficult and dangerous conditions".