A British teenager is feared dead after being washed out into the North Sea while swimming with friends.
The 19-year-old girl was in the water off the Dutch coast alongside three friends at sunset on Sunday evening when she went missing.
The other three – also Britons – have all been rescued and brought back to safety after emergency responders found them covered in blood in the water.
All four are understood to have been caught up in “wild” conditions in the North Sea after jumping into the water by the Zuidelijk Havenhoofd, a rocky spit of land by a harbour in The Hague.
The four were swept out to sea after swimming near the Zuidelijk Havenhoofd in The Hague
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Emergency services had been called just before 8.30pm on Sunday, and despite a wide-ranging search, investigators had only been able to find three of the swimmers before it became too dark to continue looking.
Rescuers now face a race against time to find the unaccounted-for girl, with almost two days having passed since the incident.
It’s understood that the three friends – all of whom have since been hospitalised – had tried to bring the 19-year-old back to shore as the sea began washing the group out away from safety.
A witness at the Zuidelijk Havenhoofd had told Dutch outlet Omroep West: “Two boys were pulled out of the water right in front of me.
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Boats, helicopters and cranes have all been thrown into action to scour the water’s surface
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“They both had bloody legs… There was also a mother there who was panicking and screaming.”
“The water was so wild, really impassable. Those boys barely survived.”
Officials have pointed to rocky undersea terrain in the area around where the quartet were swept away as an explanation for their injuries.
Since Monday, investigators’ efforts have shifted from rescue to recovery, local emergency services have said.
Emergency services were seen at the beach shortly after the teenagers were swept out to sea
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But as the search continues, dozens of searchers from rescue teams have flocked to the shore, with boats, helicopters and cranes all thrown into action to scour the water’s surface.
Footage from the scene shows lines of investigators trawling through the shallows with searchlights, while others comb through the rocky sea walls along the harbour.
GB News has approached the British Embassy in The Hague for comment.
