A missing girl rang police to say she had been raped but did not know where she was – and then was saved from her attacker when a police drone found her.

The terrified 16-year-old called Lincolnshire Police to tell them she had been attacked and said she was still with the rapist.

She told operators they were in an abandoned industrial estate inside a high fence, but had no idea of its precise location.

Police deployed a drone equipped with a thermal camera and the aircraft located the pair within minutes near a drainage ditch in Boston.

Officers arrested a man in his 30s. Police tweeted a film clip of the incident, showing the drone’s thermal camera picking out people in the dark.

Earlier in the week, the same force found a missing man with dementia in the dark using the drone.