“Five people drowned. They were three women, a man, and a child. Their bodies have been recovered,” Marwan Adham, an official from Raparin’s civil defense department, told Rudaw.
They were all members of one family from Akre, he added.
A seven-year-old child fell into the water and the four others tried to save the child’s life, but none of them made it out of the water, according to Ali Qadir, spokesperson for the civil defense department.
The Kurdistan Region’s lakes and rivers are popular tourist attractions, especially in the hot summer months, but every year people lose their lives in them.
The drownings are caused by multiple factors such as lack of swimming skills, unfamiliarity with the geography, freezing waters, and failure to use lifesaving equipment like lifejackets and inflatables, Erbil’s civil defence directorate spokesperson told Rudaw last year.
In the first eight months of 2023, 61 people drowned in the Kurdistan Region’s rivers, Mariwan Hassan, director of crisis response and management at the Joint Crisis Coordination Centre (JCC), told Rudaw last year.
According to data from JCC, 77 people drowned in 2022. Between 2018 and 2022, a total of 400 people died while swimming in the rivers and lakes and 250 people were rescued.
