DHAKA, Bangladesh (CU)_Fifteen people have died while another 400 are missing after a huge fire destroyed the world’s biggest refugee settlement in Bangladesh.
According to police and aid groups, the fire, which broke out on Monday (22 March), left at least 50,000 people homeless, with around 10,000 flimsy bamboo-and-tarpaulin shelters destroyed.
“People ran for their lives as it spread fast. Many were injured and I saw at least four bodies,” Aminul Haq, a refugee, said.
Johannes Van der Klaauw, the UN Refugee Agency’s representative in Bangladesh, said that 15 deaths have been registered, along with 560 people injured and 400 others missing.
“What we have seen in this fire is something we have never seen before in these camps,” he said. “It is massive. It is devastating.”
According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), in 2017, nearly 1 million refugees fled prosecution and violence in Myanmar for Cox’s Bazar, where they are now living in a network of overcrowded camps in the south-eastern district in Bangladesh.
The fire on Monday was the third blaze to hit the camps in four days, with two separate fires having destroyed scores of shelters on Friday as well. Although the UN’s International Organization for Migration has pledged $1 million for relief efforts, it is reported that another $20 million will be required to respond to the refugees’ most urgent needs.
Although officials say that the fire appeared to have started in 1 of the 34 camps, before spreading rapidly to 3 other sites, however, the cause of the blaze is yet unknown. Rights groups have demanded an immediate probe as it is not clear why the incidents occur repeatedly.
“The frequency of fire in the camps is too coincidental, especially when outcomes of previous investigations into the incidents are not known and they keep repeating,” Saad Hammadi, Amnesty International’s South Asia campaigner, tweeted.
Meanwhile, the government of Bangladesh is pushing for the refugees to be relocated to an isolated island in the Bay of Bengal, which is said to be vulnerable to cyclones and prone to flooding.
