Police have found the bodies of missing girl Hebe Zwart and her care worker Sanne Bos in a car upside down in a ditch.

The car, a black Kia Picanto, was spotted by a police helicopter after the search had shifted to a new area on Wednesday evening.

Police had issued an amber alert for Hebe, who is 10 and required constant care for a physical condition, on Tuesday.

Sanne Bos was taking Hebe from a daycare facility in Raamsdonksveer to her home in Vught on Monday afternoon but they never arrived.

The police are now trying to establish why the car left the A59 highway, close to the busy Empel junction with the A2, and said on Thursday afternoon Hebe and Sanne appear to have died in a tragic accident.

‘What we want to know is how the accident took place without anyone seeing it,’ local police chief Stijn van Griensven said.

Some 200 people had been involved in the search for the girl over the past three days.