DHAKA – Bangladeshi officials began investigating the cause of a massive fire that killed at least seven and displaced tens of thousands at a Rohingya refugee camp.
The fire ripped through the Balukhali camp near the southeastern town of Cox’s Bazar late on Monday, burning through thousands of hutments as people scrambled to save their meager possessions.
“The cause of the fire is still unknown,” said Zakir Hossain Khan, a senior police official. “Authorities are investigating to determine the cause of the fire.”
Sanjeev Kafley, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies’s delegation head in Bangladesh, said more than 17,000 shelters had been destroyed in the blaze, and tens of thousands had been displaced.
The fire spread over four sections of the camp containing roughly 124,000 people, around one-tenth of the more than one million Rohingya refugees in the area, he added.(Reuters)
