At least seven children and a teacher have been killed after a landslide struck a girls' school inside a Rohingya refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, a coastal city in southeastern Bangladesh, on Wednesday afternoon. Rescuers pulled 13 people from the mud and debris that engulfed the Islamic study centre, eight of whom died; the remaining five were taken to hospital for treatment. The victims included children as young as seven, eight, eleven, and twelve years old, according to local district officer Panna Akhter.

The Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner Mohammed Mizanur Rahman confirmed the death toll as frantic search and rescue efforts unfolded at the site. It remains unclear exactly how many people were inside the school hut at the time it was buried. Bangladesh has been battered by heavy monsoon rains since Sunday, with several deadly landslides already reported in the Cox's Bazar area in the days leading up to Wednesday's disaster.

Cox's Bazar is home to more than one million Rohingya people, making it the world's largest refugee settlement. The vast majority fled a deadly military crackdown in neighbouring Myanmar, beginning most intensively in 2017, and now live in densely packed, makeshift camps spread across hilly terrain. That geography makes the settlements acutely vulnerable to landslides, particularly during Bangladesh's annual monsoon season, which typically runs from June through September.

The Bangladesh weather office has forecast continued heavy rainfall in the region, raising serious concerns about the risk of further landslides and flooding across the overcrowded camps. Aid agencies and local authorities have long warned that the combination of steep, deforested hillsides, fragile shelters, and extreme population density creates dangerous conditions each monsoon season. Wednesday's tragedy underscores how little margin for safety exists for the hundreds of thousands of children and families living in the settlement.