At least 11 people have died in a massive fire that devastated thousands of homes at a Rohingya refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, according to the disaster management and relief secretary.
The massive fire destroyed homes of around 45,000 people of over 9,300 families, Md Mohsin said at a press briefing in the district on Tuesday afternoon.
More than 200 structures of Bangladeshi locals were also damaged in the fire that swept the camp in Ukhiya’s Balukhali for over five hours on Monday.
A “small” number of people were injured in the disaster, the secretary said at the Office of the Refugee, Relief and Repatriation Commissioner.
“Some might have taken shelter in nearby homes,” he said.
He also said the authorities were investigating to confirm how many people were missing.
Shahdat Hossain, a senior station officer at Cox's Bazar Fire Service, said earlier on Tuesday that the rescuers pulled the bodies of seven Rohingya people from the rubble.
Of them, two were children, reports bdnews24.com with details from Reuters.
Video and photographs showed a blaze ripping through the camp. Black smoke billowed over burning shanties and tents as people scrambled to recover their possessions.
The cause of the blaze has not been established.
More than a million Rohingya live in the camps in southern Bangladesh, the vast majority having fled Myanmar in 2017 from a military-led crackdown that UN investigators said was executed with "genocidal intent", charges Myanmar denies.
Zaifur Hussein, a 50-year-old refugee who escaped the fire but lost his home and was sheltering with friends, said he believed dozens may have been killed and that fencing around the camps made it difficult to flee.
"When we were in Myanmar we faced lots of problems... they destroyed everything," he said. "Now it has happened again."
Snigdha Chakraborty, the Bangladesh director for Catholic Relief Services, said she was worried about the lack of medical facilities in the area.
"Medical facilities are basic and burns require sophisticated treatment, plus hospital beds are already partly taken up with COVID-19 patients," she said. "Most likely there will be fatalities because the fire is so large."
A Rohingya leader in Cox's Bazar, a sliver of land bordering Myanmar in southeastern Bangladesh, said he saw several dead bodies.
"Thousand of huts were totally burned down," Mohammed Nowkhim told Reuters.
Another large blaze tore through the camp in January, destroying homes but causing no casualties.
The risk of fire in the densely populated camps is high, and Monday's blaze was the largest yet, said Onno Van Manen, Country Director of Save the Children in Bangladesh.
"It is another devastating blow to the Rohingya refugees who live here. Just a couple of days ago we lost one of our health facilities in another fire," he said.
The UNHCR said humanitarian partners had mobilised hundreds of volunteers from nearby camps for the support operation, as well as fire safety vehicles and equipment.
