A young girl has been badly injured after the rubber ring she was riding in collided with a yacht.

She was being towed at high speed behind a motorboat in the Orwell Estuary in Suffolk when the accident happened, and suffered a broken leg, a fractured skull and brain injuries.

A spokesman for HM Coastguard said: “It’s a bit of a jigsaw puzzle about what happened. “We had a report that the yacht was struck and the vessel with the ring went on further down river.”

Police are asking for anyone who might have seen the incident to come forward.