Two bodies of drowning victims were recovered from Phu Ninh Lake in Nui Thanh District, Quang Nam Province, located in central Vietnam, on Saturday.

A group of six 12th-grade students from Cao Ba Quat High School in Nui Thanh went to Phu Ninh Lake for a swim, early reports said.

The body of water they swam in belongs to a larger lake system situated in Tam Xuan 1 Commune that borders Tam Xuan 2 Commune in the district.

While they were swimming, Truong Van Vuong and Luu Quoc Bao, both aged 18 and residing in Nui Thanh District, drowned.

Rescuers and local officials rushed to the scene immediately after being informed of the drownings, said Tran Thanh Xuan, chairman of the Tam Xuan 2 People’s Committee.

Some divers were deployed to look for the victims. At 6:30 pm on the same day, they recovered the two drowning victims’ bodies.

The local government then handed over the bodies to their families for funeral rites, while relevant agencies are investigating the cause of the drownings.

In Vietnam, many such tragic accidents have happened, especially in summer. Young people are the age group most susceptible to drowning.

About 2,000 children drown in Vietnam each year, according to an article published on the website of the Vietnamese parliament last year.

This death rate is the highest in Southeast Asia and ten times that of developed countries.

Drowning is the leading cause of death, around 48.8 percent, in children, the Vietnamese Ministry of Labor, War Invalids, and Social Affairs said in a report last year.

Many Vietnamese schools now offers training courses designed to teach swimming techniques for their students in recent years, hoping to prevent drowning.

Some Vietnamese lawmakers have suggested including a swimming course as a required subject in the curriculum.

This proposal sparked off a fierce debate in a legislative session two years ago.

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