A British father and his son have drowned after being swept out to sea off the coast of Mallorca. The incident occurred on Saturday at Cala Antena beach, a small bay near the resort of Calas de Mallorca in the south-east of the Spanish island.
The victims were identified locally as George Selby and his son Louis. The boy was reportedly caught by a wave while standing on steps cut into rocks overlooking a cove. His father entered the water in an attempt to rescue him but both drowned.
Lifeguards were alerted by the boy's mother but were unable to save the father and son, who had arrived for a holiday on the Balearic island just two days earlier. A Foreign Office spokeswoman confirmed the deaths, saying: 'We are aware of the tragic deaths of two British nationals in Majorca on the first of September.'
The tragedy follows a series of drowning incidents involving British nationals abroad. Less than two weeks earlier, a five-year-old British girl and her 66-year-old grandfather drowned in Portugal after being hit by a large wave at the resort of Nazare. In the same week, Cambridge University student Marcus Hughes-Hallett drowned while swimming off the Maltese island of Comino.
