AN SUV CARRYING seven members of a British family plunged off a high bridge in Iceland, killing three people and critically injuring the others, authorities said.

Icelandic police said one child was among the dead and two were among the injured.

The accident occurred at about 9.30am when the vehicle slammed through a railing on the one-lane bridge at Skeidararsandur, a vast sand plain in southern Iceland. The car landed on a rocky river bank.

Police say it remains unclear what caused the British driver to lose control of the vehicle but temperatures were around freezing at the time.

Tour guide Adolf Erlingsson was among the first on the scene.

“It was horrible,” he told The Associated Press. “The car seemed to have hit the ground many metres from where it stopped. We struggled getting everyone out.”

Police only identified the victims as British; their names and ages have not been released. The four who survived were flown by helicopter to a hospital in Reykjavik.