Head of the R'Chai 3 Village, Kra Jan Song, said that the accident occurred at 1 pm on May 19 when four boys aged between 6-10 went to play near a reservoir in the area. One suddenly fell into the reservoir, and three others jumped in to try to save him, but they all drowned.

It was not until late in the afternoon that the boys' families found them dead in the reservoir while searching for them. Two of them were brothers.

"The reservoir was over 500-square-metres and nearly two metres deep," the official said. "Local people built it to store water for watering vegetables. It lies some 100 metres from residential areas and is not fenced."

Kra Jan Song added that the reservoir had almost dried up due to prolonged drought, but the water level had recently risen to over 1.50 metres due to heavy rains over the past two days.

A three-year-old child also drowned after falling into a reservoir in the province's Da Huoai District on May 18.

Statistics from the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs showed that some 2,000 children died from drowning in Vietnam every year. The number of rural child drownings was double that of urban areas, and 55 percent of drowned children were from families facing poverty.