According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), more than 550 shelters – where about 3,500 people live – were completely or partially destroyed in the fire, as well as 150 shops and a facility belonging to a non-profit organization.
Photos and videos provided to Reuters by a Rohingya refugee in the Nayapara camp showed families sifting through charred corrugated iron sheets to store. But of the camp, which had stood for decades, little remained, apart from concrete poles and a few tree shells.
“Everyone is crying,” said refugee Mohammed Arakani. “They lost all their possessions. They lost everything, burned down completely, they lost all their possessions.”
UNHCR said it provided shelter, supplies, winter clothing, hot meals and medical care for the refugees expelled from the camp in Cox’s Bazar district, a piece of land bordering Myanmar in southeastern Bangladesh.
“Safety experts are contacting the authorities to investigate the cause of the fire,” the agency said, adding that no casualties were reported.
Onno van Manen, director of Save the Children land in Bangladesh, called the fire “another devastating blow to the Rohingya people who have endured unspeakable hardship for years.”
Mohammed Shamsud Douza, the deputy government official in Bangladesh responsible for refugees, said the fire brigade spent two hours extinguishing the fire but was hampered by the explosion of gas cylinders in homes.
The Bangladeshi government has moved several thousand Rohingya to a remote island in recent weeks, despite protests by human rights groups claiming some of the resettlement has been forced – allegations denied by authorities.
More than a million Rohingya live in mainland camps in southern Bangladesh. The vast majority fled Myanmar in 2017 due to a military repression carried out with ‘genocide’, according to UN investigators, Myanmar accuses.
According to the refugees, part of a camp inhabited by Rohingya that had fled Myanmar after an earlier military campaign was destroyed.