Students watched through their computers in horror as masked men broke into a class mate’s house and robbed her during their live Zoom lesson.

In the video shared online, a teacher is seen coaching his students via Zoom. Suddenly, two men wearing masks storm into Maria Jose’s room as she is on a Zoom chat with 25 others as well as her teacher.

For more than 25 seconds, the robbers’ actions are recorded for the whole class to see until the criminals finally realise they are on camera.

Her classmates alert the teacher, who is speaking and seems not to have noticed what is going on.

"Does anyone have the address or the number of her parents?" one asks.

Another replies: "I have her mother’s number."

A third person tells them to "call her straight away."

The image then seems to freeze on screen after one of the thieves closes the laptop in order to steal it together with other valuables from the property.

The incident took place in the Ecuadorian city of Ambato on Friday, September 4.

Thankfully, the victim's classmates managed to alert police and four suspects were arrested.

In a statement, Ecuador Police said: "During this operation, units from the Organised Motorised Group (GOM) were dispatched and were informed of the criminal act upon arriving at the location.

"The perpetrators of the robbery fled the scene in a motorised vehicle and thanks to the location of the mobile phones they robbed, they were located and captured in a sector known as ‘Huachi Grande’."

Watch the video below.