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- Author, Joel Guinto and Marita Moloney
- Rolle, BBC News
4 hours ago
Bangladesh authorities are investigating the cause of a massive fire at a Rohingya refugee camp in the southeastern city of Cox’s Bazar, which left 12,000 people homeless on Sunday (March 5).
There were no casualties, but the fire destroyed 2,000 shelters after spreading quickly through gas cylinders in kitchens, officials said.
The police are investigating whether the fire was an act of sabotage. According to local media, a man was arrested.
Most of the more than one million residents, Rohingya refugees, have fled persecution in neighboring Myanmar.
This Monday (3/6), hundreds returned to the Cox’s Bazar region to see what they could salvage amidst the ruins.
The fire broke out around 2:45 p.m. local time on Sunday and quickly destroyed the bamboo and canvas shelters, an official said.
The fire was brought under control within three hours, but at least 35 mosques and 21 refugee learning centers were also destroyed.
Photos showing the extent of the devastation were released.
Many who lived there can be seen searching the charred area where only metal bars and charred corrugated iron roofs remain.
Credit, STR/EPAEFE/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK
Hrusikesh Harichandan of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies told the BBC the camp had been “massively damaged”.
He said basic services such as water supply centers and testing facilities have also been affected.
“My home was destroyed. [Minha loja] was also burned,” Mamun Johar, a 30yearold Rohingya, told AFP.
“The fire took everything from me, everything.”
Thick plumes of black smoke billowed over Camp 11, one of many in the region bordering Myanmar.
Relocating the roughly 12,000 people displaced by the fire will be difficult given the overcrowded conditions in the “megacamp,” according to Refugees International agency Hardin Lang.
Providing basic services to these people in other parts of the camp will also be a challenge as many services such as health clinics and schools have been destroyed.
“It is essentially a serious incident for an already chronically very vulnerable and vulnerable population,” he told the BBC.
The camps, overcrowded and precarious, have long been prone to fire.
Between January 2021 and December 2022, 222 fires were reported in Rohingya camps, including 60 cases of arson, according to a Bangladesh Defense Ministry report released last month.
In March 2021, at least 15 people died and around 50,000 were left homeless after a massive fire destroyed a camp in the settlement.
The refugee camp is home to people fleeing Myanmar’s military crackdown on the Rohingya ethnic minority.
The Rohingya are Muslims living in the largely Buddhist country of Myanmar, where they have been persecuted for generations.
The recent Rohingya exodus to Bangladesh began in August 2017 after a brutal reprisal by the Myanmar military against a Rohingya insurgent group that attacked several police posts.