The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said more than 550 shelters – housing about 3,500 people – were either partially or completely destroyed in the fire, as well as 150 stores and a nonprofit facility.
Photos and video provided to Reuters by a Rohingya refugee in the Nayapara camp showed families scouring charred corrugated iron to recover them. But little was left of the camp, which had stood for decades, save for concrete posts and the chaff of a few trees.
“Everyone is crying,” said refugee Mohammed Arakani. ‘They have lost all their belongings. They have lost everything, they have completely burned down, they have lost all their belongings. ‘
UNHCR said it provided shelter, equipment, winter clothes, hot meals and medical care to the refugees displaced from the camp in Cox’s Bazar district, a stretch of land bordering Myanmar in southeastern Bangladesh.
“Security experts are working with authorities to investigate the cause of the fire,” the agency said, adding that there were no casualties.
Onno van Manen, Save the Children’s country director in Bangladesh, called the fire “another devastating blow to the Rohingya people who have endured unspeakable hardships for years.”
Mohammed Shamsud Douza, Bangladesh’s deputy government official responsible for refugees, said the fire brigade took two hours to put out the blaze but was hampered by the explosion of gas cylinders in homes.
The Bangladesh government has moved thousands of Rohingya to a remote island in recent weeks, despite protests from human rights groups claiming that some of the relocations were forced – allegations denied by authorities.
More than a million Rohingya live in mainland camps in southern Bangladesh, the vast majority of whom fled Myanmar in 2017 after a military-led crackdown that UN investigators said was executed with “genocidal intent”. Myanmar denies.
The fire destroyed part of a camp inhabited by Rohingya who had fled Myanmar after a previous military campaign, according to refugees.