The students were rescued from the bottom of the cliff at Fairhead

Six students have had to be rescued from the bottom of a cliff in County Antrim, the Coastguard has said.

The alarm was raised at about 2230 BST on Saturday when the girls, who are aged between 17 and 24, had not returned from a hike in Ballycastle.

A rescue helicopter from Sligo and the PSNI helicopter lifted the six Duke of Edinburgh Award participants from the bottom of a cliff at Fairhead.

Diana Gadd from the Coastguard said that Fairhead could be very dangerous.

"The girls, I must say, were all very well equipped," she said.

"The police helicopter spotted two of the girls and was able to land and recover them.

"But the other four girls were in a rather more precarious situation, so we called out the Irish Coastguard rescue helicopter from Sligo.

So, it was a very happy ending for an incident which could have gone terribly wrong."