12,000 Left Shelterless By Huge Fireplace At Rohingya Camp In Bangladesh

The blaze was introduced beneath management in lower than three hours.

Kutupalong:

A fireplace destroyed 2,000 shelters at a Rohingya refugee camp in southeastern Bangladesh on Sunday, leaving round 12,000 folks homeless, an official mentioned.

The fireplace broke out round 2:45 pm (0845 GMT) at camp quantity 11 in Kutupalong, one of many world’s largest refugee settlements, and quickly engulfed the bamboo-and-tarpaulin shelters, Mijanur Rahman, Bangladesh’s refugee commissioner, advised AFP.

“Some 2,000 shelters have been burnt, leaving about 12,000 forcibly displaced Myanmar nationals shelterless,” he mentioned.

A minimum of 35 mosques and 21 studying centres for the refugees have been additionally destroyed, although there have been no studies of any accidents or deaths, he added.

“My shelter was destroyed. (My store) was additionally burnt,” mentioned Mamun Johar, a 30-year-old Rohingya man.

“The fireplace took the whole lot from me, the whole lot.”

The blaze was introduced beneath management in lower than three hours.

It was not clear how the hearth began. The authorities have ordered an investigation.

Fires are frequent within the camps the place almost a million Rohingya refugees dwell in squalid circumstances.

Most of them fled a navy crackdown in Myanmar’s Rakhine state in 2017 and took refuge in Bangladesh.

A Bangladesh defence ministry report final month mentioned that between January 2021 and December 2022, there have been 222 fireplace incidents within the Rohingya camps — together with 60 circumstances of arson.

In March 2021, in what was the worst blaze within the Rohingya camps, at the very least 15 folks have been killed and a few 50,000 have been displaced after a hearth engulfed a complete block in a settlement.
 

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