Photos: 15 dead, 400 missing after fire in Cox's Bazar Rohingya refugee camp
Updated On Mar 23, 2021 05:40 PM IST
- A fire broke out March 22 in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar, home to the world's biggest refugee camp, where nearly one million people from the Rohingya Muslim minority are sheltering, having fled a military-led offensive in neighbouring Myanmar. The fire ripped through the Balukhali camp late in the day, burning through thousands of shelters as people scrambled to save their possessions. The cause of the fire and the extent of damage are as yet unknown.
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Updated on Mar 23, 2021 05:40 PM IST
A Rohingya woman sitting with her belongings, a day after her shelter was burned down following a fire at a Rohingya refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh on March 23. The fire ripped through the Balukhali camp late on March 22, burning through thousands of huts as people scrambled to save their meagre possessions.(Ro Yassin Abdumonab / REUTERS)
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Smoke billows at the site of the fire in Cox's Bazar on March 22. More than a thousand Red Cross staff and volunteers worked with fire services to extinguish the blaze, spread over four sections of the camp containing roughly 124,000 people, around one-tenth of the estimated 1 million Rohingya refugees in the area, Sanjeev Kafley, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies' delegation head in Bangladesh told Reuters.(REUTERS)
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People are seen amidst the debris at a Rohingya refugee camp in Ukhia on March 23 after the blaze forced thousands to flee. Fifteen people have so far been confirmed dead and 400 are still missing, the United Nations said March 23.(AFP)
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Rohingya refugees sift through rubble at the site where their shelters burned down in Cox's Bazar on March 23. "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 in Geneva via video-link from Dhaka.(Ro Yassin Abdumonab / REUTERS)
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People are seen clearing debris at a Rohingya refugee camp in Ukhia on March 23, the day after a huge blaze. The UN's International Organization for Migration (IOM) said it has pledged $1 million to relief efforts but a further $20 million would be required to react to the most urgent needs.(AFP)
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Rohingya refugees watch smoke rising following a fire at the Rohingya refugee camp in Balukhali on March 22. IOM spokeswoman Angela Wells told Reuters that the fire had caused "catastrophic damage", and the health clinic run by the IOM, the camp's largest, was completely destroyed.(AP / PTI)
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Refugees stand next to burning homes after the fire broke out at Cox's Bazar on March 22. The cause of the fire is still unknown.(REUTERS)
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