COX BAZAR: Fifteen folks have to this point been confirmed lifeless and 400 are nonetheless lacking within the big blaze on the Rohingya refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, the United Nations mentioned Tuesday.
“What now we have seen on this hearth is one thing now we have by no means seen earlier than in these camps. It’s huge. It’s devastating,” Johannes van der Klaauw, the UN Refugee Company’s consultant in Bangladesh, informed reporters in Geneva through video-link from Dhaka.
“We’ve to this point confirmed 15 folks lifeless, 560 injured, 400 are nonetheless lacking and at the least 10,000 shelters have been destroyed. Which means at the least 45,000 persons are being displaced and for whom we now search provisional shelter.”
The hearth broke out Monday and left at the least 50,000 folks homeless because it ripped by means of their flimsy bamboo-and-tarpaulin shelters, based on police and support teams. Terrified households fled with no matter they might carry.
It was simply the newest blaze in current weeks — and the most important since 2017. Bangladesh has ordered a probe.
“Folks ran for his or her lives because it unfold quick. Many have been injured and I noticed at the least 4 our bodies,” mentioned Aminul Haq, a refugee.
Catastrophe administration and aid official Mohsin Chowdhury put the dying toll at seven.
Officers mentioned the blaze appeared to have began in one of many 34 camps — which span about 8,000 acres (3,200 hectares) of land — earlier than spreading quickly to a few different websites regardless of determined efforts to place out the flames.
Thick columns of smoke may very well be seen billowing from blazing shanties in video shared on social media, as a whole bunch of firefighters and support staff pulled refugees to security.
Firefighters lastly introduced the blaze underneath management round midnight.
Police inspector Gazi Salahuddin mentioned the fireplace grew after gasoline cylinders used for cooking exploded.
Mohammad Yasin, a Rohingya serving to with the firefight, informed AFP the blaze raged for greater than 10 hours and was the worst he had seen.
A volunteer for Save the Youngsters, Tayeba Begum, mentioned “youngsters have been working, crying for his or her households”.
Refugees Worldwide mentioned in an announcement: “Many youngsters are lacking, and a few have been unable to flee due to barbed-wire arrange within the camps.”
This was echoed by Myo Min Khan, a Rohingya, who wrote on Fb: “We have been unable to flee due to the fence, my youngest daughter received injured badly.”
AFP was not independently in a position to confirm the claims in regards to the fence.
Police rejected the accusation, saying solely a tiny a part of the camp was fenced.
“This tragedy is an terrible reminder of the susceptible place of Rohingya refugees who’re caught between more and more precarious circumstances in Bangladesh and the truth of a homeland now dominated by the army liable for the genocide that compelled them to flee,” Refugees Worldwide mentioned.
It was the third blaze to hit the camps in 4 days, hearth brigade official Sikder, who solely goes by one title, informed AFP.
Two separate fires on the camps on Friday destroyed scores of shelters, officers mentioned then.
Sikder mentioned the reason for the blaze was not but recognized.
Two large fires had additionally hit the camps in January, leaving 1000’s homeless and gutting 4 UNICEF colleges.
Amnesty Worldwide’s South Asia campaigner, Saad Hammadi, tweeted that the “frequency of fireside within the camps is simply too coincidental, particularly when outcomes of earlier investigations into the incidents usually are not recognized and so they maintain repeating”.
Rohingya chief Sayed Ullah demanded a direct probe. “It’s not clear why these hearth incidents are taking place repeatedly within the camps. It wants correct and full investigation,” he mentioned.
The federal government has in the meantime been pushing for the refugees to be relocated to a distant island within the Bay of Bengal, saying the settlements have been too crowded.
To date, 13,000 Rohingya have been moved to the flood-prone island, which critics say can be within the path of lethal cyclones.
