Bangladesh: Fire Destroys More Than 1,000 Shelters in Rohingya Refugee Camp
The blaze erupted around midnight at the Kutupalong camp in Ukhiya and quickly spread, driven by strong winds, said Shafiqul Islam, the head of the Ukhiya Fire Station. He told The Associated Press that no one had been killed or injured.
“It was a big fire, and it burned down about 1,040 shelters in the camp,” he said. “We took about two hours to put out the flames, with the help of 10 fire units from Ukhiya and other stations in the district.”
An Associated Press reporter who was at the scene said thousands of refugees, including women and children, had fled to a nearby open field with their belongings as the fire raged in the early hours of Sunday.
“We are suffering from the cold severely, facing a difficult situation,” said Zuhura Begum, 65, who was sitting by a stream with her grandchildren after escaping the fire. “Our homes have been destroyed.”
The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, said in an email to The Associated Press that fire response volunteers had worked with the firefighters to bring the blaze under control. It said an assessment of the extent of the damage was being made.
The cause of the fire was not immediately clear, but Islam said preliminary statements from the refugees suggested that it had started from a mud oven.
Read More:
Fires are common in the refugee camps, where more than one million Rohingya Muslims live in cramped and flimsy shelters. In March, a fire left thousands of refugees homeless for a time.
Most of the refugees fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar in late August 2017, when the Myanmar military began a brutal crackdown on the Rohingya, a persecuted ethnic minority in the Buddhist-majority country. The refugees have been denied citizenship and other basic rights in Myanmar, where they face widespread discrimination and violence.
Conditions in Myanmar have deteriorated further since a military coup in 2021, and efforts to repatriate the refugees have stalled. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh has repeatedly said that the refugees will not be forced to return. Rights groups say the situation in Myanmar is not safe or conducive for their return.
In 2022, the United States confirmed accounts of mass atrocities against Rohingya civilians by the Myanmar military, calling it a systematic campaign of genocide.
Source: Agencies
