15 Children Drown in Russian Lake After Boating Accident

— -- Russian police have arrested five people in connection with the drowning of at least 15 children after a summer camp boating trip went disastrously wrong.

The children died after the boats were capsized on Saturday by bad weather on Lake Syamozero in Russia’s Karelia region, in the northern part of the country, according to statements from investigators.

The children were among 47 who had been taken out onto the lake from a summer camp by four instructors. Strong winds and large waves tipped the boats over, throwing the children into the freezing waters. Some managed to struggle to shore, but because of the cold and the force of the waves the 15 could not, the statement said. The dead were all between the ages of 12 and 15.

The survivors spent the night freezing on an island, unable to call for help, according to Russian state newspaper, Rossiiskaya Gazeta. Five children have been treated for hypothermia, Russia’s Emergencies ministry said.

Investigators are blaming the four instructors for the deaths, accusing them of recklessly taking the children out despite forecasts of stormy weather and signs it was clearly dangerous. In the statement released by Russia’s Investigative Committee, the equivalent of the F.B.I., officers accused the instructors from the Park-Hotel Syamozero camp of ignoring signs of the approaching storm and failing to check storm-warnings which had been issued on the day. According to the statement, investigators have been told the instructors may have ignored requests not to sail from the children, who had heard rumors of the storm warnings.

The five people arrested include three instructors as well as the owner of the camp and as her deputy. They are charged with negligence leading to the death of two or more people.

“I sympathize with all the parents and those close to the children, who died because of the negligence and stupidity of the adults, with whom they had entrusted what was dearest to them: the lives and health of their children,” the spokesman for the Investigative Committee, Vladimir Markin, said in a statement.

The deaths have prompted an outpouring of irate condemnations from officials and intense media coverage. Russia’s prime minister, Dmitrii Medvedev, accused the trip’s organizers of “absolutely flagrant negligence.”

Markin later wrote on his Twitter account: “The instructors were thinking about saving their skins. How on earth could the lives of children be entrusted to such people?!”

Questions are being raised about conditions at the camp prior to incident, with reports that the camp may have been ordered to be closed last year. Markin said on the radio station Vesti FM, that investigators were examining the reports that local prosecutors had sought to close the camp over sanitary violations.

The Investigative Committee statement pointedly noted that it was not the first time the camp had been investigated, saying that a staff-member in 2011 had been jailed for 13 years for beating to death a security guard after the two had got drunk on the grounds of the camp.

Russia’s Emergencies ministry said the camp will now be closed.