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Monsoon Landslides Kill Nine in Bangladesh Camps, Including Eight Refugees
Heavy rains triggered hillside collapses at four sites in Cox’s Bazar overnight Sunday into Monday. At least eight Rohingya refugees and one local resident died, with authorities relocating residents from vulnerable slopes.
Jul 7, 2:54 AM·1m read3 sources
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Landslides triggered by heavy monsoon rains killed at least nine people, including eight Rohingya refugees, in the Cox’s Bazar camps of southeastern Bangladesh. Hillsides collapsed at four locations between late Sunday and early Monday morning, burying shelters under mud and debris. Rescuers recovered seven bodies while refugees found an eighth.
A separate hillside collapse killed a Bangladeshi man when it struck his house. Two additional children suffered injuries in the incidents. Ali Ahmed, a Rohingya refugee, said his parents and younger brother died when their shelter was buried.
“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 told Reuters. More than a million Rohingya live in the overcrowded camps, the world’s largest refugee settlement.
Most shelters consist of bamboo and plastic sheets built on steep, deforested hillsides. The United Nations Refugee Agency recorded 36 refugee deaths in similar landslides between 2021 and 2026. Authorities have already moved about 1,000 refugees from landslide-prone slopes and plan to relocate several thousand more.
The meteorological department forecast additional heavy rain in the coming days. Renewed fighting in Myanmar’s Rakhine state between the military and the Arakan Army has prompted Bangladeshi officials to increase monitoring near the border after reports of people gathering there.
