Officials stated Saturday that eleven kids drowned and ten others were rescued during a school outing for a river cleanup in Indonesia’s West Java Province.
Local officials reported 150 students from an Islamic junior high school were cleaning up along the banks of the Cileueur River on Friday when 21 of them fell into the water.
“The weather was good and there was no flash flood,” said Deden Ridwansyah, chief of the Bandung Search and Rescue Office.
“Those children who drowned were holding each others’ hands. One of them slipped and the others followed,” Ridwansyah said.
Residents in the area and a rescue squad were able to save ten of the students, who were taken to a local hospital.
Rescuers deployed large orange inflatable rafts to look for victims and all students were accounted for when the search ended Friday night.
The students did not appear to be wearing flotation gear. According to some sources, they were attempting to cross the river, which is popular for rafting and inner tubing, when they drowned.
In Indonesia, where millions of people live in mountainous areas or in flood plains, rains cause regular landslides and flash floods.
A flash flood in February 2020 killed at least six students who drowned in a river in Yogyakarta province’s Sleman district.
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