People carry umbrellas as they gather near a landslide affected area at the Balukhali refugee camp in Ukhia at Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar on June 19.-/Getty Images
At least 10 people, including eight Rohingya Muslims, were killed and several others injured on Wednesday after heavy monsoon rains triggered landslides in refugee camps in southern Bangladesh, officials said.
People died in landslides at four separate places in the early hours of Wednesday, Mohammad Shamsud Douza, a senior Bangladesh government official in charge of refugees, said after days of heavy rain as the monsoon season began.
He said children and women are among the dead.
More than 1 million Rohingya live in crowded camps in the border district of Cox’s Bazar, the world’s largest refugee settlement, after fleeing a military crackdown in neighbouring Myanmar in 2017.
The Bangladesh weather office said it expected heavy rains to continue for the next few days.
Rohingya refugees mostly live in shacks made of bamboo and plastic sheets, often on steep, bare hills.
“We are facing a terrible situation in the camps due to the rain, even the narrow paths are so slippery and dangerous,” Rohingya refugee Mohammed Kamal said.
Torrential rain and the onrush of upstream water from India also left hundreds of thousands of people marooned in the northeastern region of Bangladesh, still recovering from a cyclone that hit the country’s coastal belt in the southern part late last month.
More than 500,000 people have been affected by the flood in the northeastern districts of Sylhet and Sunamganj, with water levels surpassing danger levels at six points along four rivers in the region, officials said.
Health Minister Samanta Lal Sen on Wednesday instructed medical professionals and officials to take appropriate action to combat the outbreak of diarrhoea and other water-borne diseases in the flood-affected region.
He said hospitals should have enough saline and medication on hand to combat diarrhoea and water-borne illness epidemics and keep adequate anti-venom to handle snakebite cases.