The New Year has started with tragedy for two Adelaide families after two 11-year-old boys drowned at a popular Adelaide beach.
The incident started to unfold about 6pm on New Year's Day when emergency crews and lifesavers responded to a call that children were in difficulty near the Glenelg jetty.
Three children were pulled from the water, but two remained missing.
The two 11-year-old boys, friends from Adelaide's northern suburbs, were found unresponsive shortly afterward.
Ambulance crews tried to revive them, but one of the boys died at the scene.
The second boy was taken to the Women's and Children's Hospital in a critical condition, but was pronounced dead on arrival.
Surf Life Saving South Australia emergency operations manager Andrew Bedford said three other children were rescued after receiving a report of five children in trouble in the water at 6pm.
Mr Bedford said the children had been playing on the Glenelg breakwater when they slipped and fell in.
"They were playing, I believe, on the breakwater and slipped off the rocks into the breakwater," Mr Bedford told the ABC.
"There is quite a deep channel on the other side of the breakwater there, so very hard to swim with the current that's running through there as well."
He urged people to swim at patrolled beaches and ask lifesavers for advice on where to enter the water.
There were 12 coastal drownings across South Australia in 2015 compared to seven in 2014, according to a national report by Surf Life Saving.
Police have appealed for people with more information to come forward.
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