Bangladesh defends use of fences after deadly Rohingya camp fire

Humanitarian agencies call for the removal of barbed wire fences, Bangladeshi officials deny they trapped the refugees.

Bangladesh has defended the use of barbed wire fences around vast camps holding almost a million Rohingya refugees, after a major fire left at least 15 people dead and nearly 45,000 homeless. The fire, which gutted some 10,000 refugee shanties, was the deadliest since more than 740,000 Rohingya fled a military crackdown in Myanmar in 2017 that United Nations investigators concluded was executed with “genocidal intent”. The UN, aid groups and Rohingya leaders said the fences erected by the military trapped many people during the fire and hampered rescue work during Monday’s 12-hour blaze in the maze of bamboo and tarpaulin huts in the world’s biggest refugee settlement.