An official investigation revealed that the recent fire, which displaced thousands of Rohingya Muslims in refugee camps on the southeastern coast of Bangladesh, was a "planned act of vandalism".
On March 5, the fire hit Camp 11 in the border area of Cox's Bazar, which hosts more than a million Rohingya Muslim refugees who fled military repression in Myanmar in 2017, and now live in tens of thousands of huts made of bamboo sticks and thin plastic sheets.
Officials said nearly 2,800 shelters and more than 90 facilities, including hospitals and education centers, were destroyed in the fire, leaving more than 12,000 refugees homeless.
"The Rohingya we spoke to claimed it was pre-planned sabotage," Abu Sufyan, a senior district government official who led a seven-member government committee that investigated the incident, said in a press conference on Sunday, adding that some people in the camps prevented Refugees managed to put out the fire, and allowed the fire to burn down the shelters.
He added that the fire broke out in separate places at the same time, and this proves that it was a planned act, adding that it was a deliberate attempt to impose the dominance of extremist groups inside the camps.
He did not name the groups.
"We recommend that the law enforcement agency conduct another investigation to identify the groups behind the fire," he said, explaining that the report relied on the testimonies of 150 witnesses, including at least 50 Rohingya, who said that an anti-Rohingya group had set fire to the tents.
In this regard, Muhammad Ridwan Khan, a refugee human rights activist in Cox's Bazar camp, told Anadolu Agency, "The fire was not accidental, but deliberately set by a gang."
Refugee camps in Cox's Bazar, southeastern Bangladesh, are frequently exposed to such fires.
A massive fire in March 2021 killed at least 15 refugees and destroyed more than 10,000 shelters.