A young girl was injured yesterday at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe after glass fell from a skylight as she was watching a show.

A young girl was injured yesterday at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe after glass fell from a skylight as she was watching a show.

The girl, thought to be five, was injured during a performance of the Little Mermaid at C +3 venue on Chambers Street. The venue is normally known as Adam House, and is owned by Edinburgh University.

The emergency services were called just after noon and the area was evacuated, while the child was taken to the Royal Hospital for Sick Children. She was later discharged after treatment.

Hartley Kemp, artistic director of C Venues, said: "During a performance of The Little Mermaid, a section of glass fell from a skylight above the audience.

"The performance was stopped and the audience was evacuated until the space could be made safe.

"First-aiders assisted one audience member who was injured, and an ambulance was called.

"The University of Edinburgh, who own the building, have arranged repairs to the skylight, and the theatre space is now safe and ready to reopen."

All Festival venues are given health and safety checks by Edinburgh City Council before they can be used as venues during the Festival.

A spokesman for Edinburgh University said: "This venue like many other university buildings has been hired by a production company during the Fringe Festival.

"University buildings are subject to regular inspections and we will be working with the production company involved to establish how this happened.

"This is an extremely unfortunate incident and we wish the girl and her family well."

Jon Morgan, the director of the Fringe, said: "We were concerned when we heard about accident that happened during a performance of The Little Mermaid.

"But the good news is that the girl who was injured has now been discharged from hospital and that C Venues staff acted professionally evacuating the area and administering first aid.

"The Fringe works closely with Edinburgh City Council and all of the 247 Fringe venues to make sure that safety is the first priority when it comes to running a venue."

Meanwhile, the four biggest venues of the Fringe - who announced this year that they are marketing themselves as a separate Edinburgh Comedy Festival - said they enjoyed record ticket sales this weekend.

Despite talk of ticket chaos last week, The Assembly, Gilded Balloon, Pleasance and Underbelly said they had successful opening weekends.

They said that they had sold more than 250,000 tickets, despite initial concerns over glitches with the Fringe's box office systems.

Assembly had the problem of oversold performances for the opening weekend due to these ticketing problems.

"Thanks to the forebearance of the public who were contacted prior to the shows, all these issues were resolved and the weekend went incredibly well with packed audiences across all our venues," a statement said.

William Burdett-Coutts, director of Assembly, said: "Everyone has worked incredibly hard to address the box office issues ."

The Gilded Balloon had several sell-out shows, while the Pleasance had 25 sell-outs.