The gigantic fire that ravaged the Rohingya refugee camps of Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh left at least 15 dead, according to a still provisional toll, a UN official said on Tuesday (March 23).
"What we saw with this fire is something we have never seen before. It is massive and destructive," said Johannes van der Klaauw, UNHCR official in Bangladesh, indicating that for the time being the toll. provisional report also reports 560 wounded, 400 missing and at least 45,000 displaced persons.
"Nearly 10,000 shelters were set on fire," Mohsin Chowdhury, disaster management and relief secretary, who came to the scene from the capital Dhaka, told AFP.
"We have assembled a committee of seven members to investigate the fire" which broke out on Monday, he said.
The firefighters finally brought the disaster under control around midnight.
It is the third fire to break out in the Rohingya camps in four days, a firefighter official, Sikder, told AFP, stressing that the origin of the disaster remains unknown at this time.
Succession of fires in a few days
Already Friday, two fires had destroyed dozens of shelters, according to the authorities.
Nearly one million members of this Muslim minority in Burma live in precarious conditions in camps in Cox's Bazar district, after fleeing military repression in their country in 2017.
Authorities said the blaze started in one of 34 camps, covering more than 3,000 hectares, before spreading to three other camps, forcing refugees to flee taking what they could save with them.
According to the organization Refugees International, at least 50,000 people have fled after the fire reduced thousands of makeshift huts made of tarpaulins and bamboo to ashes.
>> See also: in Bangladesh, Dhaka faces the influx of climate refugees
"We are providing relief by providing food and water, and erecting emergency shelters for people who have lost their homes," said MA Halim, chief of operations at Cox's Bazar for the Crescent, on Tuesday. Bangladesh Red.
He stressed that "even greater efforts" will be necessary "in the coming weeks, especially with the approach of the cyclone season".
Gazi Salahuddin, a police inspector, also estimates that "around 50,000 people" have fled to seek refuge with "relatives in other camps".
According to him, the fire has escalated with the explosion of gas canisters used by refugees for cooking.
Thick columns of smoke billowed from the burning shelters where hundreds of firefighters and aid workers battled the flames and helped evacuate the refugees.
The fire raged for more than 10 hours, Mohammad Yasin, a Rohingya man, told AFP.
"The biggest fire since 2017"
"This is the biggest fire since the Rohingya influx in August 2017," Deputy Commissioner for Refugees Shamsud Douza told AFP, adding that food had been provided to the displaced and that aid workers were trying. to provide them with all the necessary humanitarian support.
Rohingya representative Sayed Ullah called for "an immediate investigation", saying the nature of the fires raised serious concerns.
"It is not known why these fires are repeated in the camps. We need a proper and complete investigation," he told AFP.
"Many children are missing, and some have not been able to flee because of the barbed wire installed in the camps," he also lamented in a statement.
The police, however, dismissed the accusation, saying only a very small part of the camp was fenced.
The NGO Refugees International is concerned that the fire is reviving traumatic memories of the persecution suffered by the Rohingyas in Burma in 2017.
"This tragedy is a terrible reminder of the vulnerable position of the Rohingya refugees caught between increasingly precarious conditions in Bangladesh and the reality of a homeland now ruled by the military responsible for the genocide which forced them to flee," he added. 'organization.
Two large fires have already broken out in these camps in January, leaving thousands of Rohingya homeless and four schools erected by Unicef destroyed.
With AFP
The summary of the week
France 24 invites you to come back to the news that marked the week
I subscribe
Take international news everywhere with you!
Download the France 24 application
google-play-badge_FR