Sunbathers Bask Next To Child Corpses

July 21, 2008 — -- Shocking photos of sunbathers on an Italian beach soaking up the rays next to a pair of covered child corpses have Italians reeling.

The nonchalant beachgoers carried on Saturday as if nothing were amiss, ignoring that two children from the Roma ethnic group had drowned, ostensibly before their eyes.

The two girls, identified as Cristina Ibramovic, 15, and Viola Ibramovic, 13, were selling trinkets on the Torregaveta beach near Naples, in southern Italy, according to the Italian newspaper La Repubblica.

They decided, along with their cousin and a friend, to go for a swim in a stormy sea.

Strong currents swept the girls far from shore and, despite rescue efforts, two of them died, according to witnesses.

Their bodies were carried ashore, laid out on the beach and left in the sun until the emergency services arrived.

"We picked up the bodies amid total indifference," the ambulance driver who went to collect the bodies told La Repubblica.

People were eating lunch only a few feet away from the dead girls.