The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said more than 550 shelters – home to about 3,500 people – were totally or partially destroyed in the fire, as well as 150 stores and a facility owned by a non-profit organization.
Photographs and video provided to Reuters by a Rohingya refugee in the Nayapara camp showed families rummaging through carbonized corrugated iron sheets for rescue. But little remains of the camp, which has stood for decades, apart from concrete posts and the bark of some trees.
“Everyone is crying,” said refugee Mohammed Arakani. “They lost all of their belongings. They lost everything, completely burned, they lost all their property.”
UNHCR said it is providing shelter, materials, winter clothes, hot meals and medical care for displaced refugees from the camp in Cox’s Bazar district, a piece of land on the border with Myanmar in south-eastern Bangladesh.
“Security experts are contacting the authorities to investigate the cause of the fire,” the agency said, adding that no victims were registered.
Onno van Manen, Director of Save the Children Country in Bangladesh, called the fire “another devastating blow to the Rohingya people, who has endured indescribable deprivation for years”.
Mohammed Shamsud Douza, the Bangladesh deputy government official in charge of the refugees, said the fire service spent two hours putting out the fire, but was hampered by the explosion of gas cylinders inside the houses.
The Bangladeshi government has moved several thousand Rohingya to a remote island in recent weeks, despite protests by human rights groups that say some of the relocations were forced – allegations denied by the authorities.
More than one million Rohingya live in mainland camps in southern Bangladesh, the vast majority having fled Myanmar in 2017 from a military-led crackdown that, according to UN investigators, was carried out with “genocidal intent”, denies accusations of Myanmar.
The fire destroyed part of a camp inhabited by Rohingya, who fled Myanmar after an earlier military campaign, according to refugees.