GENEVA, June 11 (Xinhua) -- Over 31,000 people living at Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar Rohingya refugee camps are living in areas considered to be at high risk of deadly flooding and landslides, as two days of heavy monsoon rains having caused severe structural damage, the UN migrant agency IOM warned on Monday.
IOM said that within 24 hours of the rains starting, humanitarian agencies reported some 59 incidents, including landslides, water logging, extreme wind and lightning strikes.
Over the same period aid agencies there reported that over 9,000 people were affected and that this number will increase as the rains continue.
"The risks remain huge, given the vast size and nature of the congested, makeshift camps. The hilly terrain is now largely bare of vegetation and the rains have made the soil extremely unstable, increasing the risk of large scale flooding and landslides," IOM said in a media statement issued here on Monday.
IOM said it, together with its partners, have responded by relocating thousands of vulnerable households to safer ground ahead of the rains.
On Aug. 25 of 2017, a Rohingya militia allegedly attacked three police posts in Myanmar's Rakhine state and sparked the government's return of attacks. The exchanges of fire have caused hundreds of thousands to flee into neighboring Bangladesh.
Earlier on June 6, relevant UN agencies signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Myanmar government on the refugee issue, paving the way for a "first and necessary step" to establish a framework for cooperation between the UN and Myanmar to create conditions for the return of refugees to places of origin or of their choosing.
