Three brothers aged six, eight and nine have died after falling through ice on a private pond near Bonham, Texas.

The boys’ mother said she ran into the freezing lake and frantically tried to pull her sons from the water, but the ice kept breaking beneath them. The incident happened on Monday.

“They were just screaming, telling me to help them,” Cheyenne Hangaman told the Associated Press. “And I watched all of them struggle, struggle to stay above the water. I watched all of them fight.”

Ms Hangaman, a mother of six, told CBS News that she first learned of the tragedy when her daughter ran over to her, shouting that her sons had fallen into the icy pond, which was near the house where the family had been staying.

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The youngest boy fell through first after trying to “ice skate” on the pond, Ms Hangaman told CBS News. She added that his two older brothers then jumped in after him in an attempt to rescue their sibling.

“I tried to fight for my kids’ life, where I had to watch them struggle and drown and I couldn’t help them,” she told the TV network.

The boys’ names were given by family members as Howard Doss, six, Kaleb Doss, eight, and EJ Doss, nine.

– Guardian. Associated Press contributed to this report