A woman was killed after the car she was driving plunged 300ft over cliffs.

Rescue teams scaled the rockface at notorious suicide spot Beachy Head in an effort to rescue the woman yesterday.

Firefighters took three hours to free the body of the woman, believed to be in her fifties, from the wreckage of her silver Honda which had landed on its roof.

She was taken to Eastbourne District Hospital where she was pronounced dead.

Horrified witnesses raised the alarm after watching the car leave the clifftop at Belle Tout lighthouse at 4.30pm yesterday.

Leading firefighter Phil Walter said: "It took us about half an hour to get to the scene.

"We went to Birling Gap then the inshore lifeboat transferred us to Belle Tout with the cutting equipment.

"It is quite an unusual call but it is just one of the jobs we have to do. It's worse if there are children involved."

A spokesman for Sussex Police said the incident was not being treated as suspicious. He said the woman was being identified today.

The incident happended metres from the Belle Tout lighthouse where Conservative councillor Mark Roberts and his wife live.

Coun Roberts said he was in town when the incident happened, picking up his child from nursery.

He said: "I still don't really know the full details. The police haven't needed to speak to me about it."

The operation served as a horrific reminder of a similar incident two years ago when a group of five teenagers in a Ford Fiesta toppled off 100ft cliffs at Holywell, Eastbourne.

The teenagers, then aged between 16 and 17-years-old were all injured and Stephen Tanner, then 17, lay in a coma for four months.