Monsoon landslide kills children at Rohingya camp school in Cox’s Bazar
Rescuers search for more buried as Bangladesh relocates families from risky hillsides, a million refugees remain in camps as repatriation stalls
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At least 5 children die in monsoon landslide at a Rohingya camp in Bangladesh
independent.co.uk
Monsoon rains triggered a landslide at an Islamic school inside a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar district, killing at least five children, according to The Independent citing the AP. Rescuers pulled injured children from the debris and continued searching into Wednesday evening, with officials saying more children might still be buried. The local fire service said the slide struck while children were in class.
The disaster is part of a recurring pattern in the camps, where steep hillsides, makeshift structures and saturated soil turn heavy rain into a lethal force. The Independent reports that landslides killed at least eight people in the same area just days earlier, and Bangladesh’s weather office forecast more rain. Authorities have been relocating refugees from high-risk slopes, with more than a thousand people already moved, but the report notes that many are reluctant to leave their shelters even when warned.
Cox’s Bazar hosts more than one million Rohingya refugees, a population size that makes “relocation” a constant logistical exercise rather than a one-off emergency measure. When the ground gives way, the immediate issue is rescue; the longer issue is that every safer plot of land is already contested, and each move breaks the fragile economics of camp life—small shops, informal schooling, and the proximity that families rely on for childcare and security.
Bangladesh has for years urged international help to repatriate refugees to Myanmar, but the process remains stalled, leaving the camps to function as a semi-permanent city built from temporary materials. In that setting, seasonal rain becomes an annual stress test of drainage, slope stabilisation and emergency access—systems that are difficult to build when the residents are not supposed to be there indefinitely.
By Wednesday evening, rescuers were still digging at a school that had been running classes hours before. The forecast, the authorities said, was for more rain.