dpa
Dhaka
At least two people were killed after a fire broke out in an extremely crowded Rohingya refugee camp in south-eastern Bangladesh, officials said on Tuesday.
A child was among the dead, Shamsud Douza, a senior official at Bangladesh’s Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commission, told DPA by phone.
He said the blaze originated at one of the thatched houses in the Lambashia Rohingya camp in Cox’s Bazar and quickly spread to other houses, leaving more than 600 makeshift shelters gutted.
It is estimated that 3,000 Rohingya Muslims who lost their homes in Tuesday’s fire were moved either to nearby school buildings or to their relatives’ homes, he said. Police officer Arif Hossain said it took firefighters nearly two hours to douse the flames.
The United Nations High Commission for Refugee in Bangladesh said in a post on X that the fire was under control thanks to the efforts of the refugee community, Rohingya volunteers and local firefighters.
Deaths from fires are frequent in the crowded refugee camps, home to more than 1 million Rohingya Muslims who fled persecution in Buddhist-majority Myanmar.