A 12-YEAR-OLD boy was seriously injured after falling 35 feet down a ravine while playing with friends.

Daniel Bennett, of Kirk View, Waterfoot, slipped and tumbled down a drop close to The Glen, off Bacup Road, Waterfoot, at 5.30pm yesterday.

Daniel, in year seven at Fearns County High School, Stacksteads, suffered head and spinal injuries. .

Members of the Rossendale Search and Rescue team helped pull Daniel from the ravine using ropes along with ambulance crew, firefighters, police, air ambulance crew and local doctors.

The air ambulance took Daniel to Royal Preston Hospital where he was in a serious condition today.

Margaret Bennett, Daniel's grandmother, of Park Road, Waterfoot, was waiting for news today from the hospital.

She said: "It's not very good. They were operating on his head for seven hours last night. He also has a broken collar bone. We are just waiting for news now."

Steve Spencer, 19, of Ashworth Street, Waterfoot, raised the alarm after the fall.

He said: "I was walking down the hill with my girlfriend and I looked over the drop and saw him wriggling around on the ground.

"He was awake and breathing. When the rescue teams arrived he was saying 'Get off me I want to walk home.'

"Where he fell there is a bit missing in the land and the grass has grown over it."

Members of Burnley Ambulance crew were first on the scene. Crew member John Moorhouse said: "He was conscious but had hit his head so he was barely with us. He was complaining of pains in his back.

"Parts of the drop are severe. We managed to jump down and we were there until the air ambulance took him."

Andrew Simpson, of Rossendale search and rescue team, based in Clegg Street, Haslingden, said: "There were 15 members of our team on the scene. We lifted him vertically using a stretcher and ropes with one of team being lifted up with him to look after him."

Paul West, of Lancashire Air Ambulance, said: "The team worked extremely well together to get the boy out so quickly."

A local business, Howarth Packaging, of Hugh Business Park, had to move cars from its car park to let the helicopter land near the scene.

The air ambulance took ten minutes to fly Daniel to Preston Royal Hospital.