Monsoon-triggered landslides in Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh have killed one person and left more than 4,500 homeless, aid officials said Sunday.

About 35 centimetres (14 inches) of rain fell in 72 hours before the landslides started Saturday in camps around Cox's Bazar that house more than 900,000 of the Muslim minority who fled Myanmar, the UN said.

Twenty-six landslides were reported in makeshift camps built on hills near the border with Myanmar. Trees there have been torn up to build huts and for firewood, leaving the terrain unstable.

UN refugee agency official Areez Rahman said about 30 shanty camps have been affected by the storms. One woman in her 50s died after being hit by a wall that collapsed, he told AFP.

Nur Mohammad, a 40-year-old Rohingya in the main Kutupalong camp, said 12 relatives had fled their tarpaulin-clad huts on the hills to take shelter with him.

"My home is already overcrowded. I'm worried how I will feed all these people," he said.

Officials said some 5,000 Rohingya on a strip of no man's land between Bangladesh and Myanmar had also been badly hit by the storms.

"Children are suffering from diarrhoea and we don't have enough drinking water," camp leader Dil Mohammad told AFP by phone.

He said most of the camp was knee deep in water as Myanmar authorities had put a dam on a nearby river.

Bangladesh's refugee commissioner Mohammad Abul Kalam said on Sunday emergency preparations were being made.

Monsoon storms killed 170 people in the refugee camp in 2017.

Last year the UN refugee agency moved 30,000 Rohingya out of areas considered at high risk of landslides and floods.

Some 740,000 Rohingya fled a military crackdown in Buddhist-dominated Myanmar's Rakhine state in August 2017, joining about 200,000 already living in camps across the border.

Bangladesh wants to relocate up to 100,000 of the refugees to a remote island in the Bay of Bengal but this is opposed by the refugees and international rights groups.

Indonesia's famed disaster spokesman dies of cancer
Jakarta (AFP) July 7, 2019 - Indonesia's disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho -- who shot to international fame for keeping up a 24/7 schedule while battling terminal cancer -- has died at the age of 49.

Affectionately known as Pak Topo (Mr Topo), Nugroho was the face of government efforts to get word out on the latest developments in a string of natural disasters, including a quake-tsunami that killed thousands on Sulawesi island in 2018.

He died early Sunday at a hospital in Guangzhou, China, where he was undergoing treatment for cancer which had spread to his bones and several vital organs, Indonesia's disaster agency said.

"We all feel we have lost Pak Sutopo. (He was) the foremost and indomitable figure in delivering disaster information in Indonesia," the agency said in a statement on Instagram.

The disaster in the city of Palu highlighted Nugroho's refusal to pass the torch as he dragged himself to daily press briefings, taking reporters' calls and communicating on social media at a frantic pace even as the non-smoker got treatment for Stage IV lung cancer.

Pale and visibly thinner than in the past, Nugroho got the grim news in January 2018 that he was dying and might have as little as a year to live.

Nugroho -- who is survived by his wife and two children -- held a PhD in natural resources and the environment, with an expertise in hydrology and cloud-seeding.

He spent years as a researcher and dreamed of becoming a professor, rejecting offers to take up the government spokesman job three times until his then boss convinced him that his background would earn him the public's trust. He took the position in 2010.

Widely recognised in Indonesia, Nugroho regularly updated his nearly 200,000 followers on Twitter and 70,000 followers on Instagram.

He reportedly promised his wife to slow down his work schedule but still managed to get out a 200-word update on a deadly landslide back in February 2018 from his hospital bed, local media reported.

Then in August of that year, he was sending out reports on a deadly quake disaster on Lombok island, next to Bali, minutes after finishing a chemotherapy session.

Nugroho said he had more than 3,000 contacts in his mobile phone while his social media feeds are filled with updates and dramatic images showing the aftermath of quakes, tsunamis, landslides and volcanic eruptions.

He saw himself as a public servant to the end.

"It's not about how long your life is," he said. "It's about what you do in your lifetime."

Related Links
Bringing Order To A World Of Disasters
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