Huge fire leaves thousands of Rohingya Muslims without shelter at Bangladesh camp - UNHCR

More than 3,000 Rohingya Muslims were left without shelter after a fire broke out in one of the refugee camps in southern Bangladesh. The fire broke out at the Noyapara Rohingya camp in Teknaf of Cox's Bazar district in the morning, razing more than 500 makeshift homes, built mostly of bamboo shafts and polyethylene sheets

A huge fire swept through the Rohingya refugee camps in southern Bangladesh in the early hours of Thursday, the United Nations said, destroying homes belonging to thousands of people.

The U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said more than 550 shelters home to around 3,500 people were either totally or partially destroyed in the blaze, as well as 150 shops and a facility belonging to a non-profit organization.

Photographs and video provided to Reuters by a Rohingya refugee in Nayapara Camp showed families including children, sifting through charred corrugated iron sheets to see if they could salvage anything from their still smouldering homes. But little remained of the camp, which had stood for decades, aside from concrete poles and the husks of a few trees.

"E block is completely burned down," said the refugee, Mohammed Arakani. "There is nothing left. There was nothing saved. Everything is burned down."

"Everyone is crying," he said. "They lost all their belongings. They lost everything, completely burned down, they lost all their goods."

UNHCR said it was providing shelter, materials, winter clothes, hot meals, and medical care for the refugees displaced by the calamity at the camp in Cox's Bazar district, a sliver of land bordering Myanmar in southeastern Bangladesh.

"Security experts are liaising with the authorities to investigate on the cause of fire," the agency said, adding that no casualties were reported.

Mohammed Shamsud Douza, the deputy Bangladesh government official in charge of refugees, said the fire service spent two hours putting out the blaze but was hampered by the explosion of gas cyclinders inside homes.

He said there had been no decision on whether shelters would be rebuilt or refugees moved elsewhere.

The Bangladesh government has moved several thousand Rohingya to a remote island in recent weeks, despite protests from human rights groups who say some of the relocations were forced, allegations denied by authorities.

More than a million Rohingya live in the mainland camps in southern Bangladesh, the vast majority having fled Myanmar in 2017 in a military-led crackdown the U.N said was executed with genocidal intent, charges Myanmar denies.

The fire destroyed part of a camp inhabited by Rohingya who fled Myanmar after an earlier military campaign, according to refugees.


X
Sitelerimizde reklam ve pazarlama faaliyetlerinin yürütülmesi amaçları ile çerezler kullanılmaktadır.

Bu çerezler, kullanıcıların tarayıcı ve cihazlarını tanımlayarak çalışır.

İnternet sitemizin düzgün çalışması, kişiselleştirilmiş reklam deneyimi, internet sitemizi optimize edebilmemiz, ziyaret tercihlerinizi hatırlayabilmemiz için veri politikasındaki amaçlarla sınırlı ve mevzuata uygun şekilde çerez konumlandırmaktayız.

Bu çerezlere izin vermeniz halinde sizlere özel kişiselleştirilmiş reklamlar sunabilir, sayfalarımızda sizlere daha iyi reklam deneyimi yaşatabiliriz. Bunu yaparken amacımızın size daha iyi reklam bir deneyimi sunmak olduğunu ve sizlere en iyi içerikleri sunabilmek adına elimizden gelen çabayı gösterdiğimizi ve bu noktada, reklamların maliyetlerimizi karşılamak noktasında tek gelir kalemimiz olduğunu sizlere hatırlatmak isteriz.