A landslide caused by days of torrential monsoon rain struck a girls’ madrasa inside the Kutupalong Rohingya refugee camp in south-eastern Bangladesh on Wednesday afternoon, burying the structure under mud and debris. Local authorities in Cox’s Bazar confirmed that at least five students, aged between nine and fifteen, were killed. Three other children were admitted to a camp hospital in critical condition, according to medical sources. The rescue operation, which involved fire service personnel, camp administrators, armed police, and Rohingya volunteers, concluded by evening.

Conflicting casualty figures emerged in the hours after the disaster. The Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner, Mohammed Mizanur Rahman, initially told international media that thirteen people had been pulled from the rubble, eight of whom had died—seven students and one teacher. However, a later statement from the local armed police battalion commander, Additional DIG Siraj Amin, and a district administrator revised the death toll to five, all of them female students, and said that thirty children had been inside the school at the time of the collapse. The four identified victims were named as Rashida Begum, 13, Unme Nejatul, 13, Unme Salma, 12, and Umaisa Bibi, 13. It remains unclear whether the earlier figure included fatalities from separate landslides or reflected an initial miscount.

The madrasa, a makeshift bamboo-and-tarpaulin structure, was built at the foot of a steep hill in Camp 5 of the sprawling settlement. Heavy rainfall since Sunday had already triggered multiple landslides across the Cox’s Bazar camps, killing at least eight other Rohingya refugees, including women and children, according to officials. More than one million Rohingya, most of whom fled a 2017 military crackdown in neighbouring Myanmar, live in precarious hillside shelters that are highly vulnerable to seasonal mudslides.

Authorities in Dhaka have issued warnings of further landslides and flash floods, with more rain forecast in the coming days. Evacuations of families from high-risk zones are under way, though officials note that many residents are reluctant to leave their dwellings. The provisional death toll from Wednesday’s school collapse remains subject to verification as camp administrators complete their assessment.