JAKARTA: Eleven students drowned and 10 others were rescued during a school outing for a river cleanup in Indonesia\u2019s West Java Province, officials said Saturday.
\nLocal officials said 150 students from an Islamic junior high school were participating in the cleanup Friday along the banks of the Cileueur river bank when 21 of them slipped into the water.
\n\u201cThe weather was good and there was no flash flood,\u201d said Deden Ridwansyah, chief of the Bandung Search and Rescue Office. \u201cThose children who drowned were holding each others\u2019 hands. One of them slipped and the others followed,\u201d Ridwansyah said.
\nNearby residents and a rescue team managed to save 10 of the students, who were sent to a nearby hospital.
\nRescuers used big orange inflatable rafts to search for victims and all students were accounted for when the search ended Friday night.
\nThe students apparently were not wearing flotation devices. Some reports said they were trying to cross the river, which is popular for rafting and inner tubing, when they fell in.
\nRains cause frequent landslides and flash floods in Indonesia, where millions of people live in mountainous areas or near flood plains.
\nIn February 2020, a flash flood killed at least six students who drowned in a river in Sleman district of Yogyakarta province.<\/p>\n