Heavy monsoon rains have killed at least 57 people in southeast Bangladesh, most of them buried under landslides, authorities said Tuesday.

Police warned that the death toll would likely rise as emergency workers reached remote parts of the affected area, where telephone and transport links had been cut.

“The recovery work is still going on. The death toll could rise as many areas still remained cut off,” the head of the Department of Disaster Management Reaz Ahmed told AFP.

Ahmed said disaster response teams had been deployed to the affected areas to reinforce recovery work.

“We have not been able to reach many of the affected places. Once the rains are over, we’ll get a full picture of the damage and get the recovery work in full swing,” he said.

Many of the victims were from tribal communities in the remote hill district of Rangamati, close to the Indian border, where 35 people were killed when mudslides buried their homes.

“Some of them were sleeping in their houses on hillsides when the landslides occurred,” district police chief Sayed Tariqul Hasan told AFP.

“We’ve evacuated some of the affected villagers to schools and other safe places.”

Six were killed in the nearby district of Bandarban, among them three children — siblings who were buried by a landslide as they slept in their home.

Another 16 of the casualties were in the neighbouring district of Chittagong, where at least 126 people were killed when a massive landslide buried a village a decade ago.