Eight children and two adults have been injured after a rollercoaster derailed and reportedly plunged 30ft to the ground in front of horrified onlookers at a Scottish theme park.
Eyewitnesses claimed the carriage smashed into a toddlers' ride when it hit the ground at M&D's theme park in Motherwell, near Glasgow, at around 3.40pm today.
More photos below...
Three children are said to be in 'serious' condition at Royal Hospital for Children, Glasgow, while another child and an adult are stable. Police confirmed two of the seriously injured children were standing under the ride.
Others have been taken to hospital in Wishaw, North Lanarkshire, and are all believed to be in a stable condition, including 11-year-old Liam Boyle, whose family last night said would be fine.
Children were trapped in the wreckage, while a picture of a set of wheels on the ground suggest they had 'flown off' the carriage.
Other images from the scene show the derailed carriage stuck upside down with legs of those trapped inside flailing in the air. It is unclear at this stage how serious the injuries are, but witnesses reported one young boy 'may have lost a hand'.
Last night one relative, who asked not to be named, was waiting for news of her 11-year-old grandson Liam Boyle, who had been taken to hospital in Glasgow.
She said: ‘We got a call from a lady who was with Liam, she said that she’d stay with him and that he was going to be fine. We just panicked. Then we got two calls from the police, the first was wrong and they told us that he was getting help breathing, but we found out that this was another boy who was taken away by helicopter.
‘Liam was taken in an ambulance, his dad John was stopping ambulances and managed to get the right one Liam was in so he went with him to the hospital.
‘We don’t know if he was on the ride, or has maybe been underneath and hit. We were crying and just in shock. It was just a group of young boys, I’m praying they’re all OK.’
Members of the public can be seen desperately rushing to try and help while emergency services are currently working at the scene in Strathclyde Country Park. The park has been evacuated.
Roselyn Rodger, 49, from Motherwell, said it suddenly ‘dropped like a bomb’.
The mother-of-six said: ‘I turned my head, I saw it derail and flip. And all I could see was it flipped and banged and crushed everything upside down on the ground.
‘Everyone was running in different directions and kids were screaming. It just shouldn’t have happened. Not in this day and age. The carriage only narrowly missed a little kid who was riding a bike.’
The crash was on the first weekend of the Scottish school holidays and the park, which has 750,000 visitors a year, was busy.
Witness Paul Mcfadden said on Facebook he had been near the ride when the crash happened and had tried to help two children who were injured.
He later told the Daily Mirror a young boy 'may have lost a hand' after it had been 'crushed'.
He said: 'He was lying on his back in the carriage, I think his right hand is really bad or he's even lost it. I want to find out if he's okay.'
One eyewitness at the scene, Gavin McNally, described it as 'carnage' and said it 'will be a miracle if there are no fatalities'.
A spokesman for the park said: 'A serious incident occurred at M&D's today involving the tsunami roller coaster.
'We have all emergency services on site to assist. The theme park is closed until further notice.
'As a family-run business, our thoughts are with those who have been injured and their families. We wish everyone a full recovery.
'We are cooperating fully with Police Scotland and the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) on their joint investigation to ascertain the cause of the accident.'
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