A series of massive fire at Balukhali refugee camp in Ukhiya, Cox’s Bazar on Monday destroyed thousands of Rohingya homes as police and fire service officials have retrieved 7 dead bodies from the rubble till now.
Among the dead there are two children and two women, said Md Abdullah, deputy assistant director (DAD) of Cox’s Bazar Fire Service and Civil Defence.
The fire began at 4:00 p.m. yesterday and was almost extinguished an hour later. However, a new wave of fire broke out just after 11:00 p.m., and locals said it was already burning down shanties at the heavily inhabited camp at 12:30 a.m.
The fires caused at least 50,000 people to evacuate the refugee camp as Bangladesh opens an investigation into the incident. According to the officials this is the worst fire to strike the settlement to date.
Nearly one million Myanmar’s Muslim minority live in crowded and unhygienic conditions in the Cox’s Bazar area, many fleeing a military crackdown in their homeland in 2017.
The fire was believed to have started in one of the 34 camps before spreading to two other camps. Though police have reported only seven deaths so far, witnesses from the Rohingya community believe many people had died in the fire, which has left tens of thousands without shelter.
Some refugees complained that the barbed wire fences surrounding the camp trapped several refugees, resulting in more deaths. This leads some international humanitarian organizations to demand removal of the wired fences.
The initially small fire grew and raced to other camps after gas cylinders used for cooking exploded. More than 900 shanties – home to about 7,400 refugees – had been burned down in the fire.
It was the third fire to hit the Rohingya camps in four days. Another two fires at the camps on Friday destroyed thousands of shanties.
Snigdha Chakraborty, the Bangladesh director for Catholic Services, said she was worried about the lack of medical facilities in the area.
Amnesty International’s South Asia campaigner, Saad Hammadi, tweeted that the “frequency of fire in the camps is too coincidental” as the incidents keep repeating.
