Five people, including three children, drown in northwestern Syria

Five people including three children drowned on Friday in separate incidents in northwestern Syria, bringing the number of drownings in the same region to 25 since the beginning of this year.

These took place near the city of Afrin in the Aleppo governorate, close to the Turkish border.

A civil defense volunteer told The New Arab’s sister site, Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, that rescue teams retrieved the bodies of two brothers who drowned as they were playing near the Kamrouk waterfalls.

A third child died swimming in the Maydanki lake.

As more were rescued, the volunteer said Friday’s death toll was the highest since the start of the year in one day, despite continued warnings for residents not to swim in large bodies of water in Idlib and Aleppo.

He added that the low temperature of water, the abundance of weeds and the landscape ruggedness makes it very dangerous for swimmers.

The lakes, streams or falls in northwestern Syria constitute a free and open space for people in a country destroyed by over a decade of conflict.

Idlib and parts of the Aleppo governorate remain under the control of Turkish-backed opposition groups and Islamist factions, whereas Syria’s 180 km coastline is entirely under regime control.