Monsoon hits refugee camp, one killed
DHAKA : A landslide triggered by heavy rain killed a three-year-old Rohingya refugee in Bangladesh, police said on Monday, the first casualty of the monsoon as wild storms wreak havoc in the crowded camps.
The young child was crushed in his sleep on Monday when a mud wall collapsed onto his family’s shanty in Kutupalong refugee settlement, local police chief Abdul Khaer said.
“It was triggered by rain over the last three days,” he said.
Kutupalong camp magistrate Rezaul Karim said about 300 shelters had been damaged and doz- ens of refugees evacuated since the first downpours began in earnest on Saturday.
Aid agencies have been warning that the monsoon could unleash “an emergency within an emergency” for the close to one million Rohingya living in temporary shelters in southeast Bangladesh. The region is prone to cyclones, landslides and devastating downpours during the season, which arrives in June and typically lasts three months.
The district where refugees perch on steep hillsides in bamboo and plastic tents was hammered by 138 millimetres of rain between Saturday night and midday Sunday, Bangladesh’s meteorological office said.
The area is forecast to receive 2.5 metres of rainfall during this year’s monsoon.
“Some areas, like the football field areas, are flooded. Some houses have been inundated with water. There have been a few landslides. The conditions are bad,” UN refugee agency spokeswoman Caroline Gluck told AFP on Sunday.
The monsoon season “is going to be big test for everybody involved in the humanitarian response”, she added.