A horrific natural disaster struck the Cox's Bazar refugee settlement in Bangladesh on Wednesday when a landslide buried an Islamic study center, resulting in the deaths of seven young students and one teacher.
The incident occurred as relentless monsoon rains, which have been battering the region since Sunday, caused the hillside to collapse onto the school hut. Rescue teams managed to pull 13 individuals from the mud, but eight succumbed to their injuries. Local officials confirmed the victims included children as young as seven years old.
This tragedy is part of a larger pattern of destruction in the area, with at least eight other Rohingya refugees, including five children, having lost their lives to landslides since the weekend. The settlement, which houses over one million Rohingya who fled Myanmar in 2017, remains in a state of extreme vulnerability.
Many residents live in makeshift structures built from bamboo and tarpaulin on steep, unstable terrain. With more rain forecasted, authorities are scrambling to evacuate families from high-risk zones, though the environmental conditions continue to pose a severe threat to the displaced population.
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