Rohingya Camp Landslides

Intense monsoon rainfall over southeastern Bangladesh triggered a series of landslides across the Rohingya refugee mega-camps in Cox's Bazar beginning early July 6, 2026, when hillsides above Camps 7, 11 and 15 in the Ukhiya complex gave way while families slept. Eight refugees died in that first wave — including a married couple and their four-year-old son in Camp 15, and a woman with three children aged 13, 5 and 3 in Camp 11 — with rescuers pulling five injured children from the mud and searching for more feared buried.

Rain-triggered slides continued to strike the camps in the days that followed. On July 8 a landslide swept through an Islamic school (madrassa) at a Rohingya camp, killing at least five more children, and additional fatalities in surrounding hills brought the confirmed toll from the July monsoon event to at least 18, most of them children. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees reported that 3,182 residents were forced to flee their shelters as floodwaters and slides destroyed or damaged hundreds of bamboo-and-tarp structures across the densely packed settlements, which host roughly one million Rohingya who fled violence in Myanmar.

Humanitarian agencies including UNHCR, Save the Children and Caritas Bangladesh, together with camp management and Bangladeshi authorities, are running search-and-rescue operations, distributing emergency shelter kits and relocating families from the highest-risk slopes to safer ground. Save the Children, which lost seven children from its programs in a single collapse, has expanded child-protection services, psychosocial support and temporary learning centres. Rains are forecast to continue over Bangladesh through mid-July, with responders warning that further slope failures across the fragile, deforested hills are likely.