KUTUPALONG: A fire destroyed 2,000 shelters at a Rohingya refugee camp in southeastern Bangladesh on Sunday, leaving about 12,000 people homeless, an official said. The fire broke out at Camp No. 11 in Kutupalong, one of the world’s largest refugee camps, at around 2:45 p.m. (local time), quickly engulfing the bamboo and tarpaulin shelters. Mijanur RahmanBangladesh’s refugee commissioner said. At least 35 mosques and 21 learning centers for the refugees were also destroyed, though there were no reports of injuries or deaths, he added.
“My shelter was gutted. (My shop) was also burned,” he said Mamun Johar, a 30-year-old Rohingya man. “The fire has taken everything from me, everything.”
The fire was under control in less than three hours. It was not clear how the fire started. Authorities have ordered an investigation. Fires are common in the camps where nearly a million Rohingya refugees live in squalid conditions. Most of them fled a military crackdown in Myanmar’s Rakhine state in 2017 and sought refuge in Bangladesh.
A Bangladesh Ministry of Defense report last month said there were 222 fire incidents in the Rohingya camps between January 2021 and December 2022, including 60 cases of arson. In March 2021, the worst fire in Rohingya camps killed at least 15 people and displaced some 50,000 after a fire engulfed an entire settlement block.