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Published : 01 May 2025, 01:03 PM
Two children have been killed in a landslide inside the Korean Export Processing Zone (KEPZ) in Chattogram’s Karnafuli Upazila.
While one group of locals claimed two boys had been looking for birds’ nests when the incident occurred, another group said they had gone to play in a field. A hill then collapsed onto them.
The incident occurred around 10:30am on Thursday in Block C of the EPZ near the Boirag Union Water Tank No. 8.
The dead were identified as Rohan, 11, and Mezbah, 12, from Ward No. 8.
Two other children – Sifat and Siam – were injured in the incident. They are residents of Paschim Para next to the KEPZ.
“I heard that a few local children had gone hunting for birds’ nests in the area,” according to Mohammad Sharif, chief of Karnafuli Police Station. “A section of a hill then collapsed, trapping some of them at the time. Two of them died on the spot.”
The officer said the cause of the incident would be investigated.
Mushfiqur Rahman, general manager of the KEPZ, said: “The accident occurred near the C Block. I heard that the children went there to catch birds.”
He claimed there was no hill cutting underway in the area.
“But, as it is a jungle area, foxes and dogs may have dug up the soil and made holes. The children were looking for birds in a cave-like area.”
Nurul Islam, one of the locals who rescued the injured children, said that locals rushed to the spot when one child came and told them what had happened.
“They were standing underneath the hill when it collapsed onto them, burying them in the sand.”
Sifat and Siam were rescued first after digging through several feet of sand, he said. The unconscious bodies of the other two were recovered later.
Nurul and some other locals claimed that the local children had gone to play in a field as school was closed and were standing in the shadow of the hill.
A visit to the scene showed that the hill had been cut to flatten it. There were many holes for nesting birds on the slopes of the hill.
