Huge blaze in Rohingya refugee camp leaves thousands homeless

• The Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh was devastated by a major fire on Sunday.
• Leaving 12,000 people homeless and 90 buildings destroyed.
• The fire destroyed almost 2,000 huts.

A major fire tore through a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh’s southern district of Cox’s Bazar on Sunday, leaving about 12,000 people homeless, according to the local superintendent of police, Mohammad Mahfuzul Islam.

The fire, which swept through the Kutupalong refugee camp in the late afternoon, destroyed almost 2,000 huts before it was put out, according to Islam.

He added that no casualties have been reported thus far and that an investigation is ongoing even though the cause of the fire has not yet been identified.

He stated that authorities are collaborating with national and local humanitarian organizations to give individuals who have lost their homes food and makeshift shelters.

“We will ensure no one sleeps under the open sky. Everyone will get a temporary shelter,” Islam said, with community centers and mosques providing housing to those affected by the fire.

The UNHCR office in Bangladesh tweeted on Sunday that 90 buildings, including hospitals and educational facilities, had burned destroyed.

“Rohingya refugee volunteers trained on firefighting & local fire services have controlled the fire,” it added in another tweet.

The fire on Sunday, according to the nonprofit Save the Children, was a “ghastly reminder that children trapped in the camps in Cox’s Bazar face a bleak future.”

“Today’s massive fire will have robbed many families of their safety and what little belongings they have left,” it said in a statement, adding “they continue to grapple with inadequate education, concerning levels of malnutrition, stunting, child marriage, and child labor.”

In social media, the Bangladesh office of the International Organization of Migration (IOM) of the UN stated that “they are assessing the requirements of people to provide support.”

The fire that broke out on Sunday was one of the biggest in a string of fires that have recently devastated the camp.

After a violent killing and arson campaign by the Myanmar military, an estimated 1 million members of the stateless Muslim minority known as the Rohingya now reside in what many consider to be one of the largest refugee camps in the world.

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