Four instructors and six assistants from the Kuala Kangsar Civil Defence Force (APM) have been suspended from their duties handling student training camps with immediate effect, reports Harian Metro's online version.

The decision was made by APM after a video of a training session using snakes at a camp for schoolchildren at the Kuala Kangsar APM grounds, went viral on social media.

According to the report, Perak APM director Civil Defence Colonel Mohd Noor Hassan Ashari Sulaiman said that the methods employed during the training camp for Sekolah Kebangsaan Beluru students, depicted in the video, violated the force's standard operating procedures.

Harian Metro quoted the colonel as saying preliminary findings showed that the instructors threw two pythons into a water-filled ditch that several schoolgirls were told to wade through.

"The break from SOP should not have happened and we will conduct an investigation on all of them and ensure that justice and the appropriate punishment are meted out according to APM's disciplinary procedures," he told the Malay daily.

According to the Perak APM director, the camp was the 32nd in a series that started since 2012 with 1,622 students safely trained.

This was the first time that the use of the snakes during training occurred.

The Kuala Kangsar district education office has lodged a report on the matter and an investigation is ongoing.

The school - Sekolah Kebangsaan Beluru - has also been instructed to deal with families and students affected, so that counseling can be provided, disclosed Deputy Education Minister P Kamalanathan in a press conference in Shah Alam today.

In the two-minute 50 seconds video clip posted on the Friends of PDRM Facebook page on Sunday, a group of female schoolchildren can be seen wading through a muddy pond with a snake in it.

More snakes were then thrown into the pond and the children were sprayed with a water hose and told to “be brave”.

Screaming and crying hysterically, the students frantically tried to climb out of the pool.

Netizens largely condemned the incident saying that schools children should not be subjected to such traumatic treatment.