Heavy rain in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar refugee camps triggered a landslide on Wednesday that killed eight people, including seven children and a teacher, while they were attending class at a school in the sprawling settlement. Rescuers worked to recover the bodies from the mud that engulfed the school during the incident.

The refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar, home to more than 1.2 million Rohingya who fled Myanmar following a military crackdown in 2017, are situated on deforested hillsides with unstable terrain, making them particularly vulnerable during the monsoon season. The Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner of Bangladesh, Mohammad Mizanur Rahman, reported that four victims died at the scene, while four others succumbed to their injuries after being hospitalized.

This tragedy follows an earlier series of landslides triggered by heavy rains on Monday night, which resulted in at least eight deaths as camp residents were asleep in three separate locations. The Flood Forecasting and Warning Centre of Bangladesh has issued warnings that torrential rainfall is expected to continue for the next four days, raising concerns about further disasters in the area.

Sayed Ullah, president of the United Council of Rohingya and a representative of the refugee community, called attention to the persistent risks faced by residents due to inadequate coordination in relocating refugees to safer areas. He emphasized the need for new land to reduce the likelihood of such accidents, stating that the current housing arrangements fail to address the dangers posed by the camps' geographic vulnerabilities.

The crisis of the Rohingya refugees has been described by the United Nations as one of the largest and most protracted displacement situations worldwide. The 2017 military crackdown in Myanmar, which led to widespread destruction of Rohingya villages and loss of civilian lives, remains under scrutiny at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, where it is being examined as a case of genocide.