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HANOI, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Eight students in Vietnam's northern Hoa Binh province drowned on Thursday afternoon when swimming in a river.
Altogether 10 students of Huu Nghi Primary and Junior High School in the province's Hoa Binh city swam in the Da River in the city, among them eight drowned.
All the eight bodies have been recovered, Vietnam News Agency reported.
"Drowning is a silent epidemic claiming more than 2,000 children's lives per year in Vietnam," an official from the World Health Organization in Vietnam told Xinhua recently, adding that the rate of child drowning in Vietnam is higher than in other Southeast Asian nations and 10 times higher than that of developed countries.
