Indonesia: 11 students drown, 10 rescued, during a river clean up

Eleven students drowned and another ten were rescued during a school outing for a river cleanup in Indonesia’s West Java province.

As per the local officials, 150 students from an Islamic high school were participating in the cleanup along the banks of the Cileueur river. Out of 150, 21 of them slipped into the water.

Deden Ridwansyah, the chief of the Bandung search and rescue office, was quoted by the Associated Press as saying, "The weather was good and there was no flash flood."

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"Those children who drowned were holding each others’ hands. One of them slipped and the others followed.”

The rescue team somehow managed to save 10 of the students. They were then sent to a nearby hospital. Rescuers used big orange inflatable rafts to search for victims. 

Once after the rescue mission was done, all the students were counted. 

As per media reports, the students were not wearing flotation devices. Some reports also said that they were trying to cross the river, which is popular for rafting and inner-tubing. This is how they fell in.