The children victims, aged four, six, nine and 10, with three of them brothers and sisters, and a 16-year-old, drowned Saturday afternoon while on a canoe outing in Corumba III Lake, in the city of Luziania, in Goias state, near Brazil's capital Brasilia. The other two victims were identified as two 27-year-old men.

　　Four other people in the canoe who survived told rescuers that they decided to canoe around the lake when spending the weekend at a house near the lake, but as there was some distance from shore, the front of the vessel began to take on water and eventually sank.

　　Only one of the children, a six-year-old, was wearing a life vest, and he managed to get a hold of his mother and save her from drowning, the rescuers said. A man who was rowing the canoe also survived.