This is the horrifying moment a worker was cut free after falling into a can crushing machine.

On April 8, Burmese labourer Tu, 20, was standing on a platform monitoring the metal items as they were loaded into the huge recycling machine.

However, the young lad tried to kick some of the cans through the opening after they became stuck.

Tu then slipped and fell into the machinery in a horror accident in Chanthaburi, eastern Thailand on Wednesday afternoon (April 8).

Fortunately, Tu's co-worker who was at the controls heard his friend's screams and saw him struggling in the blades. He quickly turned off the machine.

Footage shows, Tu, in a black top with medical equipment in his nose being supported by a rescue worker.

The emergency services arrived and spent more than four hours cutting open the machine to free the worker's legs that were crushed from the knees to the feet.

Paramedics eventually freed him and rushed him to the hospital where medics immediately began working to try and save his mangled leg.

Tu's Burmese co-worker, Khine, said luckily that he was at the control centre when his colleague slipped.

He said: ''I heard him shout and saw that he had fallen into the machine. I turned it off straight away to shop his whole body from being pulled through the crushers.''