In brief
A slumping mass of mud buried a girls’ school in Cox’s Bazar’s refugee camp, killing seven students and a teacher. Thirteen people were pulled from the mud, eight died and five were taken to hospitals. The incident is part of a spate of landslides that has already claimed at least eight refugees in the camp. Millions of Rohingya refugees, many living in makeshift huts on steep hillsides, are at risk as monsoon rainfall continues to rise. The disaster highlights the vulnerability of displaced communities to climate‑driven hazards.
Seven students and a teacher were killed when a landslide buried a girls’ school inside Bangladesh’s largest refugee settlement, Cox’s Bazar.
The school, which served an Islamic study centre, was hit in the late afternoon on a Wednesday when heavy monsoon rains triggered the slide. Search and rescue teams worked to pull the collapsed structure out of the mud, but the intense pressure left the building buried.
Rescuers recovered thirteen people from the mud, eight of whom later died. The five survivors were transported to hospitals. The victims included children as young as seven and as old as twelve, according to a local district officer.
This tragedy follows a series of landslides that have already cost the lives of at least eight more Rohingya refugees, five of them children, since Sunday. The attacks on the camp’s houses and schools are exacerbated by the steep terrain and the makeshift shelters that residents have built from tarpaulin and bamboo.
More than a million Rohingya refugees live in Cox’s Bazar’s settlement, having fled a violent military crackdown in Myanmar in 2017. The Bangladeshi authorities have warned that further rainfall could trigger additional landslides, and are urging families in vulnerable areas to evacuate.
The landslide underscores the increasing risk that climate change and unregulated settlement pose to displaced communities. While humanitarian agencies have been coordinating rescue and relief efforts, there remains a pressing need for long‑term solutions to protect the most vulnerable populations from natural hazards.
