Two boys and a girl drowned on Tuesday after they went swimming in a pond 50m from their home without supervision in Preah Vihear province’s Choam Ksan district.

Morakot commune police chief Im Yeth on Wednesday identified the victims as 10-year-old Chhang Sreyka and her cousins Nov Van, eight, and Nov Chek San, six.

On Tuesday morning, Sreyka’s parents left her at the home of her cousins and went farming, he said.

The three children were being taken care of by a grandmother, who took them with her to tackle a bush fire at about 10am.

Once the fire was under control, the grandmother went to cook lunch and the children went to play, he said.

“According to the grandmother, after the bush fire was put out, the children went swimming in the pond and she went to cook food for lunch. After she finished cooking, the children had not come home yet, so she went to look for them. She went to search at the pond, but she did not see them.

“She suspected they might have gone to find the parents, so she went to speak with them, but they had not seen the children. Shocked, they rushed to the pond to look for the victims and found that all three had drowned,” Yeth said.

In a separate drowning incident, Choam Ksan district police chief O Seng said on Wednesday that on January 2, provincial police officers Nhib Sokha and Khim Bichanra were riding a motorbike across a wooden bridge in Pring Thom commune when they fell off the bridge and drowned.

“Because they were speeding, and were careless, they drowned,” Seng said.