Blaze at Bangladesh refugee camp leaves thousands of Rohingya homeless
Al Jazeera
Hundreds of shelters at the refugee camp in southeastern Bangladesh were gutted with arson suspected.
Thousands of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh have been left without shelter after a fire ripped through a refugee camp, burning hundreds of homes, officials say.
The blaze tore through the tightly packed complex of bamboo and tarpaulin shelters in the early hours of the day at a camp in the country’s southeast, refugee commissioner Mizanur Rahman said on Sunday. There is suspicion of arson, the official has said.
Bangladesh is home to hundreds of thousands of Rohingya, many of whom have taken refuge there since a 2017 military crackdown on the mainly Muslim minority in neighbouring Myanmar. Those events are now the subject of a United Nations genocide probe.
“At least 711 shelters were fully burned and 63 were partially damaged,” Rahman said, adding that five education centres and two mosques were also destroyed. He said the fire made 4,000 people homeless.
