An eight-year-old girl was killed when she was struck by a car as she crossed a road at the height of the rush hour in Bradford.

Paramedics battled to save the youngster, who was fatally injured in the accident with a Ford Fiesta on Rooley Lane at 5pm yesterday.

The girl, who has not been named, was taken to Bradford Royal Infirmary but was pronounced dead shortly after 6pm.

The accident happened on the three-lane carriageway near the entrance to West Bowling Cemetery as the Fiesta was travelling towards Dudley Hill.

Donna Waterhouse told how she called for an ambulance after hearing the noise of the accident behind her home on nearby Sangster Way.

She said: "I heard a screech of tyres, a loud crash and a child scream. It was terrible, I knew a young girl had been hit. A doctor pulled up and started trying to resuscitate her. They tried that for a very long time. One member of the medical team would have a go and then hand over to another."

A 36-year-old physiotherapist who had been driving on Rooley Lane shortly after the accident happened, described how paramedics tried in vain to resuscitate the youngster, who comes from Low Moor.

"I could see the ambulance with a stretcher lying at the side of it and the body of a young person on the ground," she said.

"The paramedics were trying to resuscitate her by using heart massage.

"You could tell it was a child. I got the feeling that she must have been killed or very seriously injured because the paramedics were treating her on the ground and had not attempted to move her onto the stretcher by the ambulance."

She said: "There was a group of around five people who were all very upset and many of them were crying. Two of the three lanes of the road were blocked and the traffic was queuing right back to the roundabout at the top of the M606."

An elderly woman living close to the scene, who asked not to be named, also witnessed the aftermath of the crash.

She said the road was dangerous, adding that a new pedestrian walkway had recently been opened onto the road from Bierley.

"It is a very bad road, it is busy all day long and cars come along at such a speed.I feel awful that such a terrible thing has happened outside my home," she said.