This is the terrifying moment a young girl clings to a window sill as she perches on a tower block ledge above a dizzying 150ft (45m) drop.

Nail-biting phone footage of the drama shows the nine-year-old girl screaming for help as she holds on by her fingertips outside the ninth-storey flat.

Her wails can be heard echoing around the housing estate in n the footage in Kislovodsk, Stavropol region, Russia, as a crowd gathers below.

The pony-tailed girl, dressed in a pink hoodie and jeans, seems to buckle at the knees and looks incapable of hauling herself back into the apartment through the open window.

One witness can be heard calling up from the street below: “Hold on! Hold on!”

And another tells the girl: “Don’t look down!”

A second clip showed emergency service vehicles as paramedics and firefighters mobilise for a rescue bid on 31st October.

The clip shows a man inside the apartment before the footage runs out.

Local media report that the terrified girl was rescued and was physically unharmed.

Police are investigating how the girl came to be on the ledge and the city’s Commission on Juvenile Affairs has reportedly opened an inquiry.

A spokesperson for the regional Ministry of Internal Affairs said: “The circumstances of the incident are being clarified.”

Social media users were horrified by the video.

One ‘Irina Tumanova’ said: “These high-rise buildings should be banned altogether! Let people settle in villages, the villages are empty. These high-rise buildings were built so people could jump from them.”

Another, ‘Ekaterina Kivovich’, added: “Apparently the parents had taken her phone.”

And ‘Yabloko Yabloko’ argued: “Her parents should definitely be deprived of all rights!”