A 12-year-old British boy has died after a car lost control and crashed off a motorway in Belgium.

The BMW X5, which had a British number plate, landed on its roof on a grass verge between the road and an exit ramp near Veurne, according to local media reports.

The car had been travelling towards the French border at the time of the accident, which happened on the E40 highway at around 1am on Wednesday.

There were no witnesses, and police were only notified of the crash because of the vehicle’s automatic emergency alert system. Authorities are investigating whether the crash was linked to poor weather conditions and an “unadjusted speed”, according to the local prosecutor’s office.

In a statement, police said: “There were a total of six occupants in the car. One of them, a 12-year-old boy with British nationality, was thrown out of the vehicle and died of his injuries.”

Emergency services resuscitated the boy, one of four children in the car, at the scene before transferring him to a nearby hospital, where he died.