Eight killed as landslide hits girls' school in Bangladesh refugee camp

Eight people have been killed after a landslide struck a girls' school inside a Rohingya refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, in south-eastern Bangladesh. The mudslide buried an Islamic study centre in the coastal city on Wednesday afternoon, triggering a rescue operation in difficult conditions. Officials said it is still unclear how many people were inside the school when the slope gave way.

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Rescuers pulled 13 people from the mud and debris, according to the Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner, Mohammed Mizanur Rahman. Eight of those rescued died, while the other five children were taken to hospital for treatment. A local district officer, Panna Akhter, said some of the children were aged seven, eight, 11 or 12.

Crowds also gathered at the school to help pull out students who had become submerged. The landslide came after Bangladesh had been battered by monsoon rains since Sunday, with several deadly slides reported in Cox's Bazar. Officials said other landslides in the area had already killed at least eight Rohingya refugees, including five children, since the start of the week.

More rain is forecast in the coming days, and authorities have warned of further landslides and floods while evacuating families in high-risk areas. The incident highlights the vulnerability of the Rohingya camps, where more than one million people live in what is the world's largest refugee settlement. Many of the shelters are makeshift structures built from tarpaulin and bamboo on steep hillsides, leaving residents exposed to heavy rain and slope failure.

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The camps were established after a deadly military crackdown in Myanmar in 2017 forced hundreds of thousands of Rohingya to flee across the border into Bangladesh. The Rohingya are one of Myanmar's ethnic minorities and are mostly Muslim. They are denied citizenship by Myanmar's Buddhist-majority government, and many have lived for years in crowded and precarious conditions in Bangladesh.

That has made the camps especially vulnerable during the monsoon season, when heavy rain can quickly turn hillsides unstable. The latest deaths are likely to intensify concern over safety, shelter and evacuation planning in the settlement. What remains unclear is how many people were inside the school at the time of the landslide and whether more victims may still be found.

Authorities are continuing rescue efforts and monitoring the risk of further rain-triggered slides and flooding. The immediate focus is on treatment for the injured children and on preventing more casualties in the camps if the weather worsens.

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