Two sisters, girls aged just two and three, tragically lost their lives after going out to play alone on a frozen small lake near their home in the Romanian county of Mureș, reported local media.

The girls were playing on a frozen pond near the Tarnava River, but at one point the ice they were standing on cracked and one of the sisters fell into the cold water. The older sister tried to save her, but she also fell into the deep, cold water.

Two neighbors, firefighters, responded quickly and managed to pull the girls out of the water. They were in critical condition, with hypothermia, and doctors fought for hours to save their lives. Unfortunately, they failed.

"A colleague made a path for me, I jumped over the fence, made a chain, went down to the edge of the icy lake, reached the first girl, put her on the shore. The people standing on the edge helped me get out with the child, I put her next to the other child," explained Gerasim Bogdan, the firefighter who tried to save the girls, through tears.