Seven students and a teacher have been killed in Bangladesh after a landslide hit a girls’ school inside a refugee camp

“Some of them are seven, eight, 11 or 12 years old,” Panna Akhter, a local district officer, told BBC Bangla.

The other five children were taken to hospital for treatment.

Earlier, officials said other landslides had killed at least eight Rohingya refugees, including five children, since Sunday.

Thousands of Rohingya, one of Myanmar’s many ethnic minorities, were killed and more than 700,000 fled to neighbouring Bangladesh during an army crackdown in Myanmar in 2017

The group, which is primarily Muslim, are denied citizenship by the government of Myanmar, a Buddhist-majority country.

Many face poor living conditions in Bangladesh, living in makeshift homes of tarpaulin and bamboo on steep hillsides.

More rain is forecast for the coming days, with authorities issuing warnings for more landslides and floods, and evacuating families in high risk areas.

(BBC)

Pakistan is searching for a Boeing cargo aircraft missing over the Arabian Sea with five crew members on board.

The Karachi-bound 737-400 plane operated by a Pakistani carrier took off from Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates and lost contact with air traffic control about 9:18pm (16:18 GMT) on Tuesday after reporting a navigational ⁠system fault, the Pakistan Airports Authority said.

Minutes later, data from Flightradar24, a global flight-tracking service, showed the plane losing nearly 1,525 metres (5,000ft) of altitude in less than a minute before climbing about 1,830 metres (6,000ft) in the next 30 seconds. It then entered a final, near-vertical descent from a height of 11,140 metres (36,550ft).

Its last transmitted position placed it at 335 metres (1,100ft), descending at 22,400 feet per minute, or about 400 kilometres per hour. All contact was lost about 155 nautical miles (287km or 178 miles) west of Karachi.

Security sources told Al Jazeera a Pakistani navy ship, a merchant vessel operated by the Pakistan National Shipping Corporation and two navy aircraft are taking part in the search.

No wreckage or survivors have been found so far.

“We continue to pray, earnestly, for the safety of our colleagues,” K2 Airways, the Karachi-based private cargo airline that operated the flight, said in a statement on Wednesday, adding that it was fully cooperating with authorities on the search.

It was the only plane in the K2 Airways fleet.

If a crash is confirmed, the incident would mark Pakistan’s first major civilian air disaster since May 2020 when a Pakistan International Airlines plane crashed short of the runway in Karachi, killing 97 of the 99 people on board.

The woman suspected of carrying out a parcel bombing in Monaco which injured a sanctioned Ukrainian multi-millionaire and his family has been found dead, Ukraine’s security service (SBU) has said.

The intelligence officer subsequently confessed to Berezovska’s murder and said he had done so with “another suspect”, the agency said.

It continued: “During the search of the former law enforcement officer’s home, a basement room resembling a torture chamber was found.

“Both suspects were detained on suspicion of committing murder with premeditation by a group of individuals.”

An investigation is ongoing with the “personal assistance” of the head of the intelligence directorate Oleg Ivashchenko.

Monaco’s deputy prosecutor Morgan Raymond said Berezovska had spent days casing out the residence and was “disguised as a man” during the attack last Monday.

Three people were injured, two of them seriously, when a package exploded just as they entered the building shortly after 21:00 local time (19:00 GMT).

Berezovska was believed to have fled in a hire car to Italy and onwards to Germany – where special forces searched an apartment rented by a 39-year-old Ukrainian woman “currently on the run” in the central state of Hesse on Thursday, police said.

Interpol issued a red notice alerting police worldwide that she was a fugitive wanted for attempted murder, placing an explosive device on a public road with criminal intent and criminal conspiracy on Friday.

The SBU said Ukrainian authorities had shared all available information with officials in Monaco, with who its prosecutor general was in “close co-operation”.

Law enforcement authorities were working to identify “other suspects” in the attack, it added.

Authorities in Monaco have not confirmed the victims’ identities, but local media reported Vadym Yermolaiev, his partner and his 13-year-old son had been targeted.

Yermolaiev, a real estate developer, was named the 39th richest Ukrainian by Forbes magazine in 2020 with a reported fortune of $230m (£173.8m).

He has major interests are in wine and alcohol in Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014, and has been the subject of sanctions imposed by the government in Kyiv since 2023.

He is a Cypriot citizen, having renounced his Ukrainian citizenship in 2019, and has been living in Monaco.

(BBC)