Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh hit by fire
- No casualties reported at crammed Balukhali camp in Cox’s Bazar border district but thousands said to be homeless after blaze
- At least 1 million Rohingya refugees have left Myanmar for Bangladesh over several decades, including about 740,000 who began crossing border in 2017
A blaze that broke out at a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh on Sunday is under control, police officials told Reuters, adding that there were no casualties.
The fire hit Camp 11 in Cox’s Bazar, a border district where more than a million Rohingya refugees live, with most having fled a military-led crackdown in Myanmar in 2017, said Rafiqul Islam, additional police superintendent at Cox’s Bazar.
“We currently don’t have an estimate for damages but there are no reports of casualties,” Islam said, adding that the blaze was under control and senior officials from the fire, police and refugee relief departments were present at the site.
Thousands were homeless, a fire official and the United Nations said.
Faruque Ahmed, a police official, said the cause of the blaze was not clear.
The Rohingya Muslim refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar in southeastern Bangladesh are prone to such fires. Similar ones occurred in January 2022 and March 2021. While the blaze last year only damaged homes, the one in 2021 killed at least 15 refugees and destroyed over 10,000 homes.