Massive Fire Erupts at Rohingya Camp in Bangladesh, Probe Begins

By Staff, Agencies

A massive fire erupted at a Rohingya camp in Southern Bangladesh on Sunday leaving thousands homeless. Bangladesh authorities are investigating the cause of a huge fire.

Around 12,000 people are left without shelter after the fire razing around 2000 shelters at Cox's Bazar, reported Reuters.

The Bangladesh authorities began investigating the incident and reportedly one person is detained in connection with the incident.

However, no causalities have been reported so far. The fire had spread quickly through gas cylinders in kitchens, said an official.

The camp in the south-east is believed to be the world's largest refugee camp.

Hundreds returned to the Cox's Bazar camp site on Monday to see what they could salvage from the ruins.

According to an official, the blaze had started at about 14:45 time Sunday [08:45 GMT] and quickly tore through the bamboo-and-tarpaulin shelters.

"Some 2,000 shelters have been burnt, leaving about 12,000 forcibly displaced Myanmar nationals shelterless," Mijanur Rahman, Bangladesh's refugee commissioner told AFP.

Within three hours of the fire, the blaze was brought under control but around 35 mosques and 21 learning centers for the refugees were destroyed, Rahman added.

There had been "massive damage" to the camp, Hrusikesh Harichandan from the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies told BBC.

Basic services were also affected in the area.

According to the officials, it would be extremely difficult to relocate thousands of people affected by the fire.

"Providing basic services to people in other parts of the camp would also be a challenge because many services-health clinics, schools-have been destroyed," Hardin Lang from Refugees International told BBC.

Earlier too incidents of fires have affected the Rohingya refugee camps. Around 200 fire incidents were reported between the time period January 2021 to December 2022.

According to the Bangladesh defense ministry report released last month, at least 15 people were killed and some 50,000 were relocated after major fire broke out in the camps in March 2021.

More than 1 million Rohingya refugees have fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar over several decades, including about 740,000 who crossed the border starting in August 2017, when the Myanmar military launched a brutal crackdown. The attempts to send them back have failed with the conditions in Myanmar worsening.