Jan 10, 2022: Thousands of Rohingya have been displaced by a fire in a refugee camp in southeastern Bangladesh, police say.

“Around 1,200 houses were gutted in the blaze,” said Kamran Hussain, a spokesman for the Armed Police Battalion, which heads security at the camp on Sunday. He said the fire started at Camp 16 and spread to bamboo and tarpaulin shelters, displacing more than 5,000 people.

“The fire started at 4:40 pm [10:40 GMT] and was contained around 6:30 pm,” he told AFP. Emergency workers have contained the blaze, said Muhammad Shamsud Doza, a Bangladeshi government official in charge of refugees. He added that the cause of the fire could not be ascertained.

About 850,000 of the persecuted mostly Muslim minority, many of whom escaped a 2017 military crackdown in Myanmar that the UN has said was executed with “genocidal intent”, live in a network of camps in Bangladesh’s border district of Cox’s Bazar.

In March last year, 15 people died and about 50,000 were left homeless in Bangladesh after a huge fire destroyed Rohingya homes in the world’s biggest refugee settlement.

Another fire broke out last Sunday at the COVID-19 refugee treatment center in another refugee camp in the district, causing no casualties.

Bangladesh has been praised for accepting refugees fleeing across the border from Myanmar, but has had little success in finding a permanent home. Myanmar’s Rohingya refugees have been seeking refuge in countries such as Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia for many years.

Last month, Indonesia allowed a boat full of Rohingya refugees stranded on its shores to dock following a request from aid organizations to allow the boat to take refuge.

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