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A 17-year-old girl plunged 30 feet to her death as she climbed onto a railway bridge - to take a selfie.

Teenager Xenia Ignatyeva was a month short of her 18th birthday when she fell, and was hit by 1,500 volts as she was electrocuted when she tried to grab live wires.

Experts have warned people are increasingly putting themselves at risk as they try to take more spectacular and risky self portraits to outdo others on social networking platforms.

Xenia was a keen amateur photographer and her big passion had been taking pictures of herself with a camera she bought at the end of 2013 after a summer job.

But her life was cut short when she decided that the top of the rail bridge in Krasnogvardeysky, in the Russian city of Saint Petersburg, would make a great location for one of her pictures.

Grieving grandmother Olga said: "The police said she wanted to take a snap of herself at night, to give it the most dramatic effect and with the railway line as a backdrop.

"She was taking it herself so she went up there on her own, a girlfriend was waiting below."

But somehow the teenager lost her balance, and toppled off the side of the bridge.

As she fell, she desperately tried to grab the high voltage cable and electrocuted herself before her body dropped onto the concrete below.

(Image: EuroPics CEN)

Police, alerted by an anonymous call saying children had been playing on the bridge, fear Xenia may still have been alive for a short while after she hit the ground.

Pal Oksana Zhankova, also 17, who had waited below, is said to have been paralysed by shock.

She rushed to her friend's side and was found crouched beside her body when emergency services arrived.

Train tracks around the world have become a magnet for youngsters looking for exciting selfies.

Psychologist Martin Voigt, from Munich University, said: "We need to look at

the deeper meaning of photos taken on railway tracks.

"The photo is not so much about the theme of it, but the component behind it - they play with danger."

He said some people taking selfies are driven by the desire to take the best in the whole world, and as a result are becoming more and more extreme.