(21 Jun 2000) Japanese/Russian/Nat
A cable-drawn train car derailed Wednesday on a mountainside outside the Georgian capital of Tbilisi.
The accident injured 21 Japanese tourists and eight of them were admitted to hospital.
One person is described as being in a critical condition.
The accident happened as the cable car was travelling up the Mtatsminda Mountain.
One car overturned and slid 15 meters (yards) downhill, striking a metal barrier, said Apollon Dzhaniashvili, prosecutor of Tbilisi's central district.
A group of Japanese tourists was on board at the time of the crash.
21 were injured and they were taken to hospital.
Georgy Nishnianidze, the chief doctor at the Tbilisi State University Clinical Hospital, detailed their injuries.
He said 13 of the tourists were only lightly injured and released but the other eight had to remain in for treatment.
One was in a critical condition.
SOUNDBITE: ( Russian)
"Eight people were hospitalised in the casualty ward of the hospital with various injuries. One of them has a damaged right lung, one has damaged ribs, another has a broken leg."
SUPER CAPTION: Georgy Nishnianidze, hospital doctor
Isaka Yokaba, who was on the cable car, sat with her friend who was had been injured.
She described how when the accident happened they had already been broken down and waiting on the tracks for quarter of an hour.
SOUNDBITE: (Japanese)
So having waited about 15 minutes and not knowing what was going on we then started slowly going backwards down the hill and whilst doing that - we went wham - we hit something. We'd come back about a hundred metres but it was a bit strange. I don't really know what happened. We hit some kind of side guard rail then we bounced twice and my mother and my friend were very badly injured.
SUPER CAPTION: Isaka Yokaba, Japanese tourist
She praised the way they had been dealt with and thanked the hospital staff for being so kind.
She added it was a real shame they had the accident as they thought Georgia was a very nice country and everyone was so friendly.
The victims' names and further information about their condition was not immediately available.
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