A fire broke out in a Rohingya refugee camp in southeastern Bangladesh on Sunday, leaving about 12,000 people homeless, an official said.
Meganor told AFP that the fire broke out in the early afternoon in Camp No. 11 in Kutupalong, one of the largest refugee camps in the world, and quickly destroyed the bamboo shelters.
“Some 2,000 shelters have been burned down, leaving about 12,000 Myanmar citizens homeless,” he said.
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STRINGER PHOTO, REUTERS
Thick smoke billows from the Balukhali camp in Uchia
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Photo by Mahmoud Hussein OBU, Associate Journalist
Refugees forced to move after the fire
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STRINGER PHOTO, REUTERS
A refugee family collects their belongings after the fire
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Photo by Mahmoud Hussein OBU, Associate Journalist
burning trees
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He added that more than 30 mosques and 20 refugee education centers were destroyed, with no injuries reported.
The fire was brought under control within three hours and the authorities ordered an investigation into the circumstances under which the fire broke out.
Fires are frequent in the camps where nearly a million Rohingya refugees live in precarious conditions.
Most of them fled military repression in Burma in 2017 and sought refuge in Bangladesh.
A Bangladesh Defense Ministry report last month said that between January 2021 and December 2022, there were 222 fires in the Rohingya camps, including 60 arson.
In March 2021, one of these fires killed 15 people and left about 50,000 people homeless.
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