In Bangladesh, 12,000 Rohingya refugees are left homeless after a camp fire

On Sunday, March 5, a fire broke out in a Rohingya refugee camp in southeastern Bangladesh, leaving about 12,000 people homeless, an official said.

The fire broke out in the early afternoon at Camp No. 11 in Balukhali-Kutupalong, one of the largest refugee camps in the world, and quickly destroyed the bamboo shelters, Agence France-Presse Meganur Rehman, Commissioner for Refugees in Bangladesh.

2000 Shelter Burned

“About 2,000 shelters were burned, displacing some 12,000 Myanmar citizens.”, specially. He added that more than 30 mosques and 20 refugee education centers were destroyed, with no injuries reported.

The fire was brought under control within three hours, and the authorities ordered an investigation into the circumstances under which the fire broke out. 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 sought refuge in Bangladesh.

A Bangladesh Defense Ministry report last month said that between January 2021 and December 2022, there were 222 fires in the Rohingya refugee camps, including 60 arson. In March 2021, one of these fires killed fifteen people and left about 50,000 people homeless.