An eight-year-old girl who had been sexually assaulted and buried alive under rocks in a rubbish bin has been found by police officers investigating her disappearance.

She was discovered on a landfill site in Lake Worth, Florida, seven hours after she was reported missing. It is not yet known how long she had been in the bin.

Sergeant Mike Hall of the Fort Worth Police Department said he had been searching the landfill site on Sunday morning when he lifted the lid of a yellow recycling container.

"The lid was flipped closed. I flipped it open and observed a large pile of rocks and through the rocks one could see a hand and foot," he said.

After shouting at the motionless eight-year-old to try to get a reaction, he and colleagues began pulling the rocks from her body. She was later treated in hospital for minor injuries.

William Smith , the Lake Worth Police Department chief, said that it had been a race against time for officers. "When a child is abducted and abandoned like this, the critical thing is time," he said. "It certainly was a miracle that we found this girl alive."

He said the weight of the rubble would have made it impossible for her to dig her way out, while the landfill site was too far away from any homes for anyone to have heard her cry out.

FBI Special Agent Mike Driscoll said it was amazing the girl, who was four feet tall and weighted 80 pounds, was still conscious. "She was in a position that you wouldn't think anyone could survive," Mr Driscoll said.

Police have charged a 17-year-old, Milagro Cunningham, with attempted murder, sexual battery on a girl under 12 and false imprisonment of a victim under 13-years-old.

She had been reported missing from her godmother’s house in the early hours of Sunday.

Police spokesman Dan Boland said that Mr Cunningham, who had been living with the girl’s godmother for four months but was not related to her, had sent officers on a wild goose chase when first questioned.

Mr Boland said he told officers the girl had been abducted by two men in a brown station wagon. He also said he followed her abductors but they got away. More than 100 officers from several agencies were then involved in the search while an alert was put out on the state’s Code Amber system looking for the car.

After the girl was found in the bin at about 10.30am local time Cunningham was questioned again, and according to Mr Boland, admitted the offences. He is due in court later today.

The Palm Beach County state attorney's office said the teenager will be charged as an adult and, if convicted, could face life in prison.

The South Florida Sun-Sentinet reported today that the girl told her godmother in hospital: "I was laying there waiting. I knew you were coming."

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