ONE person is fighting for life and four others are injured following a head-on crash which closed a busy road for several hours.

The A35 was closed from the Ringwood Road junction, just beyond the Cat and Fiddle pub at Hinton, to the B3055 junction yesterday afternoon.

A Ford Fiesta and a Honda Civic collided near to Dream Design on Lyndhurst Road.

One person in each vehicle had to be freed by Hampshire fire crews and the remaining three casualties had got out of the vehicles unaided.

All five were taken by road to Southampton General Hospital. Three are said to have minor injuries, another has multiple injuries and one has life-threatening injuries.

Two whippets which had been travelling in the Ford Fiesta were cared for by members of the public after their owners were taken to hospital.

One of the dogs suffered a leg injury and an animal ambulance was also called.

Traffic was diverted through parts of the New Forest while emergency services dealt with the scene.

At one point there were five police cars, two fire engines, an air ambulance, an animal ambulance, a police support vehicle and several local authority vehicles at the scene.

Station manager Greg Garrett, from Hampshire Fire and Rescue, said earlier yesterday afternoon : "There has been a head-on collision and we have attended with two appliances from New Milton.

"The air ambulance was also called but the casualties travelled by road. At this stage I don't know the extent of their injuries."

The crash is the latest in a series of accidents in the area. Six people were injured, including a family of five, when two cars collided on August 5. A man was seriously injured when his car crashed into a tree in July and two cars collided in June.