Five people were taken to hospital after a two-car collision which saw one of the vehicles leave the road before coming to a stop at the bottom of an embankment.
Emergency services were called to the scene near East Holmes Farm in Hurlford, East Ayrshire, at around 12.25am today.
Fire crews arrived to find three people inside the car on the embankment while two others were in the car which remained on the road.
Three appliances and a specialist heavy rescue vehicle were involved in the work to free them from the cars, while paramedics and a trauma doctor provided treatment, the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) said.
All five were then taken by ambulance to Crosshouse Hospital, Kilmarnock.
Mark Gallacher, SFRS incident commander, said: "We put two sectors into operation, which meant separate teams could work on freeing the casualties from both cars.
"We developed extrication plans in close conjunction with paramedics based on their assessment of the casualties' conditions and our crews used hydraulic cutting equipment to create the space needed to safely get them from the vehicles."
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