Fire blazes through crowded Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh

The fireplace hit Balukhali camp, one of many 32 camps in Cox’s Bazar district the place greater than 1.2 million folks stay.

Fireplace and smoke billows from burning buildings at Cox's Bazar refugee camp, Bangladesh [Mohammad Shajahan/Anadolu]

A large fireplace raced via a crammed refugee camp for Rohingya Muslims in southern Bangladesh, leaving hundreds homeless, a fireplace official and the United Nations mentioned.

The blaze hit Camp 11 in Cox’s Bazar, a border district the place greater than 1,000,000 Rohingya refugees stay, with most having fled a military-led crackdown in Myanmar in 2017.

“We presently don’t have an estimate for damages however there are not any stories of casualties,” Rafiqul Islam, further police superintendent at Cox’s Bazar, informed Reuters information company.

Islam added that the blaze was underneath management and senior officers from the hearth, police and refugee aid departments have been current on the website.

The UNHCR in Bangladesh mentioned in a tweet that Rohingya refugee volunteers have been responding to the hearth with the company and its companions offering help. It mentioned a number of shelters and amenities had been destroyed because of fires.

Reporting from Dhaka, Al Jazeera’s Tanvir Chowdhury mentioned Balukhali Camp is without doubt one of the 32 camps in Cox’s Bazar, the place greater than 1.2 million individuals are dwelling.

“The fireplace remains to be on and appears to have been attributable to a cooking cylinder. Many of the houses are product of bamboo so the hearth spreads rapidly,” mentioned Chowdhury.

He defined that the area the place the hearth broke out is sort of hilly, making it tough for rescue to groups to achieve it and for households to flee.

“The well being amenities [in the area] are very rudimentary to have a quick response. There are plenty of area hospitals however not sufficient to answer 1.2 million folks,” he added.

Rohingya refugee volunteers skilled on firefighting & native fireplace providers have managed the hearth.

16 UNHCR funded Cell Fireplace Preventing Models helped attain the tough space.

A number of shelters and amenities destroyed.

Authorities, UNHCR & companions coordinating additional. pic.twitter.com/6qlerHlwbw

— UNHCR in Bangladesh (@UNHCR_BGD) March 5, 2023

Multiple million Rohingya refugees have fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar over a number of a long time, together with about 740,000 who crossed the border beginning in August 2017, when the Myanmar army launched a brutal crackdown.

Circumstances in Myanmar have worsened since a army takeover in 2021, and makes an attempt to ship them again have failed.

Final yr, the US mentioned the oppression of Rohingya in Myanmar quantities to genocide after US authorities confirmed accounts of mass atrocities towards civilians by the army in a scientific marketing campaign towards the ethnic minority.

Largely Muslim Rohingya face widespread discrimination in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, the place most are denied citizenship and lots of different rights.