Landslip kills seven children, teacher at Rohingya camp in Bangladesh
A landslip triggered by heavy monsoon rains at a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh’s southeastern Cox’s Bazar has killed at least seven children and a teacher, according to officials. The incident occurred as the region grapples with the annual monsoon season, which has already claimed several lives and displaced thousands in recent weeks.
Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner (RRRC) Mohammed Mizanur Rahman said four of the children were killed at the scene, while four others died at the local hospital after being rescued. The landslip buried an Islamic seminary inside the hilly camp complex under mud and debris during study hours after days of heavy downpour, according to Sayed Ullah, president of the United Council of Rohingya.
In a related but separate report, Al Jazeera said landslides caused by heavy monsoon rains have killed at least nine people, including eight Rohingya refugees, with hillsides collapsing at four locations in Cox’s Bazar refugee camps between late Sunday and early Monday morning. Rescuers recovered seven bodies, while another was found by refugees, according to Dollar Tripura, a civil defence official from Cox’s Bazar district, as quoted by The Associated Press. Police said a Bangladeshi man was also killed after a hillside collapsed on his house.
A Rohingya refugee, Ali Ahmed, told the Reuters news agency that his parents and younger brother were killed when their shelter was buried while they were asleep. “We fled Myanmar in 2017 to escape persecution. Now I’ve lost my family here too, and I don’t know what lies ahead for me,” he said.
The Cox’s Bazar camps are home to more than a million Rohingya who fled Myanmar’s Rakhine state during a military crackdown in 2017. The Hindu described the crackdown as a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing” per the UN. Bangladesh provided temporary refuge in crowded infrastructure with plastic sheets as roofs. Most shelters are built with bamboo and plastic sheets on steep, deforested hillsides, making them prone to landslides and flooding during the monsoon.
The United Nations Refugee Agency reported that 36 refugees died in similar landslides between 2021 and 2026. Authorities have moved about 1,000 refugees from landslide-prone slopes and plan to relocate several thousand more. The meteorological department has forecast more heavy rain.
Renewed fighting in Myanmar’s Rakhine state between the military and the Arakan Army has raised concerns that more people may attempt to flee across the border into Bangladesh. Bangladesh’s Flood Forecasting and Warning Centre said torrential rain was likely to continue for four more days in the region.