BartaBangla Report :: A mother and her daughter were buried under a landslide that hit Chittagong’s Lalkhan Bazar early on Sunday.
Incessant overnight rains in and around the port city led to landslide in the hills overlooking Lalkhan Bazar — a concern that had been voiced by environmentalists before the monsoon season.
Khulshi Police Station Sub-Inspector Mohammad Amir told “The landslide hit at Lalkhan Bazar’s Akbar Colony in the Tangkir Pahar area between 4 and 5am on Sunday.”
Quoting locals, Amir said Fatema Begum, 42, and her daughter ‘Kulsum’, 14, were trapped under the landslide that destroyed their house.
He said colony residents dug out the two dead bodies before rescuers arrived. Police and fire-fighters were working to clear the debris.Agrabad Fire Service and Civil Defence unit Deputy Assistant Director Jasim Uddin said Fatema’s house was situated at the end of the colony. Twenty feet above her house on the hill is another settlement called the Belayet Colony.
“A 20 feet wide chunk of earth fell on Fatima’s home at dawn which is located at the end of Belayet’s colony.”
Neighbour Shahnaz Begum told she heard Fatima scream right after the horrific noise of the landslide. But the mother and the daughter died soon after.
Their small tin-roofed hut was entirely buried under the landslide. Several other houses located under the steep hill are vulnerably exposed to a possible landslide.
Jasim Uddin said, “Another wall of a house at the top of the hill is at risk since a part of the hill fell apart. It can collapse any moment.”
The district administration admits that at least 1,000 families living on and around the twelve hills in Chittagong are at grave risk during the monsoon.
At least 20 people died on June 17 last year in three landslides that hit as many areas in the city.
Seventeen people died on July 1 in 2011 when a wall at the Batali Hill in Tiger Pass collapsed.
In the biggest event, 127 people were killed in a landslide that hit a part of the port city on June 11 in 2007.