KABUL (Pajhwok): At least nine people, including eight Rohingya refugees, have been killed in landslides triggered by heavy monsoon rains in southeastern Bangladesh, a media report said on Wednesday.
Hillsides collapsed at four locations in the Cox’s Bazar refugee camps between late Sunday and early Monday, burying shelters under mud and debris while residents were asleep, Al Jazeera reported.
Rescuers recovered seven bodies, while another was found by refugees, Dollar Tripura, a civil defence official in Cox’s Bazar district, said.
Police said a Bangladeshi man was killed after a hillside collapsed onto his house.
More than one million Rohingya refugees have been living in the overcrowded camps in Cox’s Bazar, the world’s largest refugee settlement, since fleeing Myanmar in 2017.
Most of the shelters are built from bamboo and plastic sheets on steep, deforested hillsides, making them highly vulnerable to landslides and flooding during the monsoon season.
Bangladeshi authorities said around 1,000 refugees had been relocated from high-risk areas and plans were underway to move several thousand more. The country’s meteorological department warned that heavy rainfall was expected to continue in the coming days.
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