At least 15 people died in a fire that struck a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh, while 400 remain missing, the UN refugee agency said.
“It is huge, it is devastating,” said Johannes van der Klaauw of UNHCR, who attended a meeting in Geneva virtually from Dhaka, Bangladesh. “We still have 400 people missing, perhaps somewhere in the rubble,” he said.
He added that UNHCR had reports of 560 people injured and 45,000 people displaced.
The fire hit Balukhali camp near the southeastern town of Cox’s Bazar on Monday night, burning thousands of huts as people struggled to save their belongings.
“Everything is gone. Thousands are homeless, ”Aman Ullah, a Rohingya refugee from the Balukhali camp, told Reuters.
“The fire was controlled after six hours, but parts of the camp could be seen smoking all night.”
“The cause of the fire is still unknown,” said Zakir Hossain Khan, a senior police officer, by telephone from the camps. “The authorities are investigating to determine the cause of the fire.”
Sanjeev Kafley, head of the delegation of the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent in Bangladesh, said more than 17,000 shelters have been destroyed and tens of thousands displaced.
More than 1,000 Red Cross staff and volunteers worked with fire services to extinguish the fire, spread across four sections of the camp containing about 124,000 people, about a tenth of the estimated 1 million Rohingya refugees in the area, he added.
“I have been at Cox’s Bazar for three and a half years and have never seen a fire like this,” he told Reuters. “These people have been displaced twice. For many, there is nothing left. “