At least 15 die in swimming accidents during German heatwave

At least 15 people have died in swimming accidents across Germany since Friday, according to police reports, as a heatwave sent many people to lakes, rivers and outdoor pools to cool off.

Among the latest deaths, a 17-year-old was recovered from a quarry lake in Peine in the northern state of Lower Saxony on Sunday. In Berlin, emergency services pulled a young man from the River Spree after he had jumped into the water.

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. 

In western Germany, a 6-year-old died in the Herner Meer lake on the Rhine-Herne Canal. 

In North Rhine Westphalia, divers recovered the body of a 14-year-old from a lake near Düren on Sunday after a three-day search. According to initial findings, he had been out on the lake with friends in a rubber dinghy on Friday when he fell into the water for unknown reasons. A 41-year-old man also drowned in a quarry lake in Düsseldorf on Saturday.

In the central state of Hesse, the body of a 40-year-old man was recovered from a lake near Frankfurt. A 76-year-old man was found lifeless in an outdoor swimming pool in Kassel on Sunday morning. Resuscitation attempts were unsuccessful.

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.

Emergency services also searched the Baltic Sea for a missing long-distance swimmer near Scharbeutz in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein on Sunday afternoon, but the search was called off without success.

Germany has been gripped by extreme heat for several days, with temperatures reaching around or above 40 degrees Celsius in some areas. The heat has been especially taxing because temperatures in many places have remained high overnight.

A jump into cold water can be refreshing in such conditions, but it can also put severe strain on the circulatory system.