- By Joel Guinto & Marita Moloney
- BBC news
Video shows the fire engulfing part of the camp, destroying shelters made of bamboo and tarpaulin
Authorities in Bangladesh are investigating the cause of a massive fire in a Rohingya refugee camp that left 12,000 people homeless.
No casualties were reported. But the fire burned 2,000 homes after quickly spreading through gas cylinders in kitchens, officials said.
The police are still investigating whether the fire was sabotage. One person was detained, local media reported.
The camp in the south-east is believed to be the largest refugee camp in the world.
Most of its residents, the Rohingya refugees, fled persecution in neighboring Myanmar.
On Monday, hundreds returned to the Cox’s Bazar area to see what they could salvage from the rubble.
The fire started around 14:45 local time on Sunday (08:45 GMT) and quickly destroyed the bamboo and tarpaulin shelters, an official said.
“About 2,000 shelters have been burned, leaving about 12,000 forcibly displaced Myanmar nationals homeless,” Mijanur Rahman, Bangladesh’s refugee commissioner, told AFP news agency.
The fire was brought under control within three hours but at least 35 mosques and 21 learning centers for refugees were also destroyed, he added.
Photos have now emerged showing the extent of the destruction.
Many of those who lived there could be seen scavenging in the burned area, where only metal struts and singed corrugated roofs remained.
Image source, STR/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock
Hrusikesh Harichandan, from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, told the BBC there was “huge damage” at the camp.
He said basic services such as water centers and testing facilities were also affected.
“My home was destroyed. [My shop] also burned,” Mamun Johar, a 30-year-old Rohingya man, told AFP.
“The fire took everything from me, everything.”
Thick black clouds were seen rising above Camp 11, one of many in the border district where more than a million Rohingya refugees live.
It will be difficult to relocate the estimated 12,000 people affected by the fire- due to the already overcrowded conditions of the “mega camp”, said Hardin Lang from Refugees International.
Delivering basic services to people in other parts of the camp will also be a challenge as many services – health clinics, schools – have been destroyed.
“This is essentially an acute incident in what is already a chronically vulnerable and precariously poised population,” he told the BBC.
The camps, crammed with dirt, have long been vulnerable to fire.
Between January 2021 and December 2022, there were 222 fire incidents in Rohingya camps including 60 cases of arson, according to a Bangladesh defense ministry report released last month.
The refugee camp houses people who fled Myanmar after a military crackdown against the Rohingya ethnic minority.
The Rohingya are Muslim in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, where they have faced persecution for generations.
The latest exodus of Rohingya fleeing Bangladesh began in August 2017, after Myanmar’s military brutally retaliated when a Rohingya insurgent group launched attacks on several police posts.
