At least 15 dead and 400 missing after massive blaze sweeps Rohingya refugee camp

A huge fire swept through a Rohingya refugee camp on Monday

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At least 15 people have died and 400 are still missing after a catastrophic fire ripped through a squalid camp in southeastern Bangladesh that houses nearly one million Rohingya refugees, the United Nations said on Tuesday. 

The blaze on Monday night was the third fire to hit the Cox’s Bazar camps in four days and the largest since more than 700,000 destitute Rohingya flooded into the camp from Myanmar to escape a brutal military-led ethnic cleansing campaign in 2017. 

A Rohingya woman sits on the ground with her belongings after her shelter was destroyed

Credit: Reuters

"What we have seen in this fire is something we have never seen before in these camps. It is massive. It is devastating," Johannes van der Klaauw, the UN Refugee Agency’s representative in Bangladesh, told reporters. 

He added that 560 were injured in the blaze that broke out in Balukhali camp. At least 10,000 shelters have been destroyed, leaving at least 45,000 people homeless. 

The devastating aftermath of the inferno

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Hundreds of firefighters and aid workers battled until midnight to bring the flames under control as they were whipped up by a strong breeze, and to try to pull refugees to safety as families tried to salvage whatever belongings they could carry as they ran through plumes of smoke. 

“The fire spread so quickly that before we understood what happened, it caught our house. People were screaming and running here and there. Children were also running scattered, crying for their family. It is the most horrific incident I have witnessed recently,” said Tayeba Begum, a Save the Children volunteer. 

Refugees stand within the smoke of a massive fire

Credit: Reuters

On Tuesday, as survivors and aid workers surveyed the charred ashes of shanties once constructed from tarp and bamboo, children were confirmed to be among the dead and missing. 

Onno Van Manen, Save the Children’s Bangladesh country director, called the disaster “another devastating blow” for the impoverished refugee population. “The risks of fires in these extremely densely populated and confined areas are enormous,” he said. 

Refugees watch as fire rips through a camp in Bangladesh 

Credit: MD Jamal Photography

The authorities are investigating the cause of the inferno. Some activists have suggested that barbed wire fencing constructed around the sprawling camp last year to control entry and exiting, could have left people trapped.  

“Those same fences may have cost refugees’ lives in a devastating fire today. Dhaka should remove the fences immediately,” said Matthew Smith, CEO of Fortify Rights, a human rights group.