DHAKA: At least two people were killed when a fire broke out in an overcrowded Rohingya refugee camp in south-eastern Bangladesh, officials said on Tuesday (Dec 24), with a child among the victims.
More than 600 huts were destroyed, with an estimated 3,000 camp residents losing their homes. Those affected were being accommodated in school buildings or had been taken in by relatives, the officials said.
The Daily Star newspaper reported that a number of people were also injured in the incident. The cause of the fire, which was brought under control within two hours, remained unknown, the newspaper said.
Shamsud Douza, a senior official at Bangladesh's Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commission, told dpa by phone that the blaze had erupted at one of the huts in the Lambashia Rohingya camp in Cox's Bazar and quickly spread.
The huts are often flimsy structures of bamboo and fabric.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) office in Bangladesh said in a post on X that the fire was under control thanks to the efforts of the refugee community, Rohingya volunteers and local firefighters.
Deaths from fires are frequent in the crowded refugee camps, which are home to more than 1 million Rohingya Muslims who fled persecution in Buddhist-majority Myanmar.
They crossed into Bangladesh after Myanmar launched a military crackdown on the minority groups in Rakhine state in 2017.
Lambashia is one of more than 30 Rohingya camps in Cox's Bazar. Taken together, the camps make up the world's largest refugee settlement, according to the UNHCR.
