At least seven people have died in swimming accidents in Germany over the weekend, police said on Sunday, as a heatwave sent many people to lakes and rivers to cool off.
Two people died in separate swimming accidents in Berlin on Saturday, police said. In one incident, a group in a rubber dinghy found an unresponsive man in the afternoon in Jungfernheideteich, a man-made lake in a public park in western Berlin.
The 42-year-old was pulled from the water and resuscitation attempts were started, but emergency services later confirmed his death at the scene.
In a second incident at Tempelhofer Hafen, an urban harbour in Berlin, a 51-year-old man was found floating lifeless in the water. Firefighters recovered him, but were only able to confirm his death, police said.
Elsewhere, police said a 27-year-old man drowned in the Neckar River near the south-western city of Heidelberg on Saturday, while a 30-year-old man died in a lake near Mannheim. A child was also reported missing in the Rhine-Herne Canal in western Germany.
In the central state of Hesse, the body of a 40-year-old man was recovered from a lake near Frankfurt.
On Friday, a 45-year-old man died after being pulled from the water at a lake near Dortmund, while an 8-year-old boy was found dead after a search at a lake near Hanover.
The bodies of two elderly swimmers had also been recovered from Lake Constance, on Germany's border with Switzerland and Austria, on Friday after they jumped into the water from a rental boat the previous day and disappeared.
Germany has been gripped by extreme heat for several days, with temperatures reaching or exceeding 40 degrees Celsius in many places.
