Eight Rohingya refugees—a female teacher and seven students—were killed, and five others were injured on Wednesday following a landslide triggered by heavy monsoon rains.
The landslide caused a portion of a girls’ religious school to collapse inside the Cox’s Bazar camps in Bangladesh.
According to the Bangladeshi newspaper “The Business Standard,” the incident occurred in the afternoon at the “Khadija Tul Kubra” madrasa located in Camp No. 5.
A portion of a hillside gave way during the heavy downpour, causing a dilapidated wall to crash onto the school building.
The Refugee Commission reported that rescue teams, alongside local residents, volunteers, and firefighters, recovered four bodies from the scene.
Nine critically injured victims were rushed to the hospital, where four of them later succumbed to their injuries.
Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner, Mohammed Mizanur Rahman, confirmed the conclusion of the rescue operations, adding that the five survivors are currently receiving treatment at various hospitals.
This tragic incident comes amidst relentless monsoon rains in Cox’s Bazar, bringing the total death toll from landslides over the past three days to 19, in addition to two children who drowned in rain-induced floodwaters.
Bangladesh currently hosts approximately 1.2 million Rohingya refugees living in dire humanitarian conditions.
They fled Myanmar following a violent military crackdown, which UN and international reports have described as amounting to “genocide.”
