Girl from London was rescued by emergency services on Saturday but died in hospital

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

A six-year-old girl has died after getting into difficulty in the sea off Margate harbour.

The girl, from Erith, south-east London, was rescued by the South East Coast ambulance service and the RNLI lifeboat service on Saturday afternoon.

A spokeswoman for the ambulance service said the girl was taken in a serious condition to the Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother hospital, where she died.

Kent police said the girl’s next of kin had been informed and there were no suspicious circumstances surrounding her death.

One local man said the beach was “heaving” with tourists on what he described as a warm but windy day. He said he saw the emergency services “swarm” the harbour in their effort to rescue the girl.

The father-of-three, who did not want to give his name, said the incident was very upsetting.

There have been a number of deaths in recent days after people got into difficulty in water.

The body of a 15-year-old teenager, provisionally named as Ben Quartermaine, was found near Clacton Pier in Essex after a search that began on Thursday.

In Bedfordshire, the body of a man in his late 20s was recovered from the Great Ouse river after reports someone had got into difficulty there on Friday afternoon.

Another man’s body was recovered from the Jubilee river in Slough on Thursday, Thames Valley police said, and police searching for a 17-year-old boy who disappeared in a quarry lake in Warwickshire also found a body on Friday.