GENEVA – Fifteen people have so far been confirmed dead and 400 are still missing in the huge blaze at the Rohingya refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, the United Nations said today.
“What we have seen in this fire is something we have never seen before in these camps. It is massive. It is devastating,” Johannes van der Klaauw, the UN Refugee Agency’s representative in Bangladesh, told reporters here via video-link from Dhaka.
“We have, so far, confirmed 15 people dead, 560 injured, 400 missing and at least 10,000 shelters have been destroyed. That means at least 45,000 people are being displaced and for whom we now seek provisional shelter.”
Nearly one million of the persecuted Muslim minority – many of whom escaped a 2017 crackdown that United Nations investigators concluded was executed with “genocidal intent” – live in squalid conditions at the camps in southeastern Cox’s Bazar district.
The fire broke out yesterday and left at least 50,000 people homeless as it ripped through their flimsy bamboo-and-tarpaulin shelters, according to police and aid groups.
Terrified families fled with whatever they could carry.
It was the latest blaze in recent weeks, and the biggest since 2017. Bangladesh has ordered a probe.
“People ran for their lives as it spread fast. Many were injured and I saw at least four bodies,” said Aminul Haq, a refugee.
Officials said the blaze appeared to have started in one of the 34 camps, which span about 3,200ha of land, before spreading rapidly to three other sites despite desperate efforts to put out the flames.
Thick columns of smoke could be seen billowing from blazing shanties in videos shared on social media, as hundreds of firefighters and aid workers pulled refugees to safety.
Firefighters finally brought the blaze under control around midnight. – AFP, March 23, 2021
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