A fire that broke out on Sunday (March 5) in a Rohingya refugee camp in southeastern Bangladesh left around 12,000 people homeless, an official said.
The fire broke out in the early afternoon at Camp Number 11 in Balukhali-Kutupalong, one of the largest refugee camps in the world, and quickly destroyed the bamboo shelters, the ministry said. Agence France-Presse Mijanur Rahman, Commissioner for Refugees in Bangladesh.
2,000 burnt shelters
"Some 2,000 shelters were burnt down, leaving around 12,000 Myanmar nationals homeless," he said. More than 30 mosques and 20 refugee learning centers were also destroyed, he added, with no casualties reported.
The fire was brought under control within three hours, and authorities ordered an investigation to establish how the fire started. 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 took refuge in Bangladesh.
A Bangladesh Defense Ministry report last month explained that between January 2021 and December 2022 there were 222 fires in Rohingya refugee camps, including 60 arson attacks. In March 2021, one such fire killed fifteen people and left some 50,000 people homeless.
