A routine afternoon in Ras Al Khaimah turned devastating after two 12-year-old Pakistani boys drowned near the Old Corniche, an incident that has left families and the wider community grappling with grief. A third child, the younger brother of one of the victims, survived after an Egyptian swimmer intervened and managed to pull him to safety.
The boys had walked toward the shore late Sunday afternoon, according to the father of one of the victims, who said the children left home without informing their families. Asif Mohammed, who lost his eldest son Omar, explained that the visit to the beach was not planned. He said his son had only been to the sea once before, and even then, “they did not swim at that time.”
He recalled repeatedly declining his son’s requests to go to the beach, worried by reports of past drowning cases. A resident of the UAE for 22 years, he said he has two sons—Omar, who died, and a nine-year-old who survived the same incident.
The drowning occurred around 5pm near the shoreline adjacent to his mobile trading shop in Ras Al Khaimah’s Dahan market, an area commonly referred to as the Old Corniche. After learning about the emergency from a nearby shopkeeper, he immediately tried calling his son’s phone. “Someone at the sea site answered him and told him that his child had been transferred to Saqr Government Hospital in Ras Al Khaimah,” he said.
He hurried to the hospital, hoping for good news, but his son had already died.
In the hours before the tragedy, the family tried to reconstruct the children’s movements. They found that Omar’s last WhatsApp activity appeared at 4:13pm on the shop’s Wi-Fi network. Minutes later, a security camera from an abaya shop in the nearby Kuwaiti market recorded the three boys walking together at 4:28pm.
The father thanked Ras Al Khaimah Police for their swift response but noted that none of the children knew how to swim.
The loss of the two friends has cast a pall of sorrow over both the Pakistani community and local residents across Ras Al Khaimah and the UAE.
