A teenager has died in a horror ski accident in northern Italy as his parents watched on helplessly.

The 14-year-old British schoolboy crashed into a treee and suffered severed chest injuries while on a red run.

The boy had worn a helmet for the ski but his parents watched in horror as paramedics worked on him for more than half an hour to no avail.

Francesco Cataldo Giorgi, vice president of the Happy Ski school in Cortina, said the tragedy was “a matter of cruel bad luck.”

“Had he fallen just a few metres earlier or later, he may have escaped unharmed. But in this sport, one wrong fall in the wrong place can be fatal. 

“We must always exercise extreme caution,” he told Corriere del Veneto.