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A 15-year-old boy suffered "horrific" injuries when his leg was set on fire when he went too close to electric cables while playing by a railway line.

The boy slipped while playing on pipes above the line in Bilston, in the West Midlands, at about 18:45 BST on Monday.

West Midlands Ambulance Service said the boy was taken to the paediatric major trauma centre at Birmingham Children's Hospital. They said his injuries were not life-threatening.

His "potentially very severe" external and internal burns were being assessed, the service said.

A spokesman said the boy was with a group of friends on some pipework, which runs parallel to the road over the tracks, where the line goes under Bayer Street in Coseley. He said: "The crews were told that he slipped down and got too close to the overhead electric cables which then arced onto his left leg, which was set on fire. His friends managed to pull him back up and put the fire out. They then dragged him roughly 10-15m to the roadside.

"We would appeal to people of all ages to be mindful of the dangers of the very high voltages that runs through the electricity cables that run on some railway lines.

Perhaps an unfortunate choice of words by the West Midlands Ambulance Service spokesman, suggesting that his friends "dragged him roughly": I rather suspect that they actually "carried him very carefully" ...  ::)