Toddler killed in mudslide at Thai refugee camp

A two-year-old girl has died and seven others remain missing after a mudslide at a refugee camp in northern Thailand near the Myanmar border, police said Monday.

The camp in Mae Hong Son province is home to around 10,000 people from Myanmar's ethnic Karen group, forced to flee a conflict that has festered for decades between rebels and the military.
Heavy monsoon rains in the mountains surrounding Mae La Oon camp caused the disaster late on Sunday, Thai Police Colonel Kantapat Netipitchayapong said.

“The authorities are still looking for the seven missing,” he told AFP, adding that the mudslide wiped out 12 houses.

“There are 11 people with minor injuries and a two-year-old girl died,” he said.

Mae La Oon is just three kilometres from the Thai-Myanmar border, one of the most remote of the numerous refugee camps lining the jungle-covered frontier.

Many families have lived in the border camps for decades, victims of a civil war that has rumbled on since Myanmar gained independence from colonial power Britain.

- AFP