Rescuers have found the body of a seven-year-old boy who went missing after falling into a flooded drainage trench in the central highlands town of Kon Tum on Monday.

Nguyen Bao Viet was found dead nearby a monument in Thang Loi Ward, two hours after he fell into a recently dug 1.5-meter-deep trench leading from a construction site on Nguyen Van Troi Street.

He was walking home from Ngo Quyen Elementary School along with a friend.

A passerby then managed to rescue his friend but Viet was swept away.

Many streets in Kon Tum were flooded by the heavy rain that afternoon.

Grieving family members and enraged locals blamed the contractor for not erecting barriers around the ditch.

At a meeting convened by the town authorities on Tuesday morning, Deputy Chairman of the Kon Tum People’s Committee, Phan Van Te, said: “As the investor in local traffic construction works, the committee is partly responsible for the accident.”

Officials at the meeting urged concerned agencies to take adequate safety measures around the construction site and speed up work on the project that was launched at the beginning of this year.

Reported by Trung Duong