The incident, which happened at 2:30pm local time outside the Carioca Arena and was broadcast live on local television.

The confirmed injured included two women and two children.

“It was like a bolt of lightning coming towards me, I couldn’t react and it hit my knee,” Cristina Camps told Globo Esporte. She is the mother of 11 year-old Ana Luisa who also sustained an injury to her leg.

Flavio Oliveira was just getting out of a handball match with his nephew when he heard the wires come crashing to the ground. He said the cable whipped against two girls, hitting one of them in the neck.

"There was no blood. But she was crying, crying, crying," said Oliveira, 40, a medical interpreter and nursing student from Cape Cod.

A statement from the Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS), which provides TV feeds for countries around the world outside NBC, said, "According to local medical authorities, there were seven minor injuries that have received medical attention. A full investigation has been launched."

The camera is operated by the OBS, a not-for-profit arm of the International Olympic Committee.

Pollyanna Padua, an Olympic worker who was working nearby, said the cable fell and injured two adult women, USAtoday reported.

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