5 kids drowned in water pond in Marawi City

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April 17, 2026 | 6:06pm

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Five grade school pupils drowned while swimming in a stagnant water pond in Barangay Panoroganan in Marawi City on Thursday, April 16.

The five children, two of them girls, were all declared dead on arrival by physicians at a hospital where a police team and employees of the Marawi City Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office brought them for treatment.

Officials of the Marawi City Police Station said on Friday that the fatalities, Rania Dobar Tucal, 11, Norol-Iman, 10, Salah Nasif, 7, and two others, Neshren, 11, and the 7-year-old Rahman, whose names local executives and police probers withheld on the behest of their clan elders, were last seen on their way together on Thursday morning to a large water pond, a catch basin of rainwaters, in a secluded area in Barangay Panoroganan.

Villagers first noticed them swimming, along with another playmate, the 8-year-old Fatma Nur Nasif, at a shallow spot of the pond, which is far from houses.

Citing reports from their units in Marawi City, Capt. Steffie Salanguit, spokesperson of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, said while swimming, the children saw a floating junk, doorless refrigerator, which they boarded and paddled with their hands towards the deep portion of the pond, where it flipped and rolled over.

Salanguit said the five children drowned while trying to swim back towards one side of the pond where they left their footwears and clothes.

All five of them were immediately buried by relatives according to Islamic tradition of burying the dead within 24 hours after death.