Thorpeness cliff collapse kills man Published duration 14 January 2017

image caption Emergency services were called to Thorpeness beach on Saturday afternoon

A man has died after part of a cliff collapsed on to a beach in Suffolk.

Emergency crews were called to Thorpeness Beach at about 13:25 GMT after reports a man was trapped under a landslide.

A search operation was launched to try to find - and then free - the man, thought to be in his late 50s, but he died at the scene.

An elderly woman also suffered minor injuries but was not taken to hospital, ambulance officials said.

Police, fire, ambulance and coastguard crews all took part in the operation.

The coastguard said it received multiple 999 calls from members of the public telling them a man was trapped.

It is not yet clear where the man was when the cliff collapsed.

'Dangerous places'

Bev Allen, maritime operations controller for the UK Coastguard, said it had been a "large-scale search and rescue effort".

She added: "We ask people to please stay away from this particular area while the emergency services are at work."

She urged people to be "mindful when out walking on the coast" and said standing on cliff edges and at the bases of cliffs were "dangerous places to be".

"It is impossible to predict when the next piece might fall or how big it will be," she added.

Erosion has been an issue on this stretch of coast for a number of years.

Large wire baskets full of stones and rocks, called gabions, were installed at Thorpeness in 2010 to bolster sea defences after storms left the cliffs exposed.

Suffolk Police said they were treating the man's death as "non-suspicious".

image caption Erosion has been an issue at Thorpeness, pictured here in 2010, for many years