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

The Islamic study centre in the coastal city of Cox's Bazar was buried by mud and debris on Wednesday afternoon, sparking frantic search and rescue efforts. It is unclear how many people were inside the school.

The country has been battered by monsoon rains since Sunday, with several deadly landslides reported in Cox's Bazar.

More than one million Rohingya people live there in what is the world's largest refugee settlement, having fled a deadly military crackdown in Myanmar.

Rescuers pulled 13 people from the mud that engulfed their school hut, eight of whom died, the Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner Mohammed Mizanur Rahman said.

"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.