Bangladesh investigates huge fire at world's largest refugee camp

Bangladesh authorities are investigating the origin of a monolithic occurrence successful a Rohingya exile campy which has near 12,000 radical without shelter.

No casualties person been reported, but the occurrence connected Sunday razed 2,000 shelters aft spreading rapidly done state cylinders successful kitchens, officials said.

Police are investigating if the occurrence was an enactment of sabotage. One antheral has been detained, section media reported.

The campy successful the south-east is believed to beryllium the world's largest exile camp.

Most of its residents, Rohingya refugees, had fled persecution successful neighbouring Myanmar.

On Monday, hundreds had returned to the Cox's Bazar country to spot what they could salvage from the ruins.

The blaze had started astatine astir 14:45 section clip Sunday (08:45 GMT) and rapidly tore done the bamboo-and-tarpaulin shelters, an authoritative said.

"Some 2,000 shelters person been burnt, leaving astir 12,000 forcibly displaced Myanmar nationals shelterless," Mijanur Rahman, Bangladesh's exile commissioner, told AFP quality agency.

The blaze was brought nether power wrong 3 hours but astatine slightest 35 mosques and 21 learning centres for the refugees were besides destroyed, helium added.

Photos are present emerging that amusement the grade of the devastation.

Many of those who lived determination tin beryllium seen picking done the charred area, wherever lone metallic struts and singed corrugated roofing remains.

Hrusikesh Harichandan, from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, told the BBC determination had been "massive damage" to the camp.

He said basal services specified arsenic h2o centres and investigating facilities had besides been affected.

"My structure was gutted. [My shop] was besides burnt," Mamun Johar, a 30-year-old Rohingya man, told AFP.

"The occurrence took everything from me, everything."

Thick achromatic clouds were seen rising supra Camp 11, 1 of galore successful the borderline territory wherever much than a cardinal Rohingya refugees live.

It volition beryllium hard to relocate the estimated 12,000 radical affected by the occurrence - fixed the already overcrowded conditions successful the "mega camp", said Hardin Lang from Refugees International.

Delivering basal services to those radical successful different parts of the campy would besides beryllium a situation due to the fact that galore services - wellness clinics, schools - person been destroyed.

"This is successful essence an acute incidental connected what was already a chronically precise susceptible and precariously poised population," helium told the BBC.

The camps, overcrowded and squalid, person agelong been susceptible to fires.

Between January 2021 and December 2022, determination were 222 occurrence incidents successful the Rohingya camps including 60 cases of arson, according to a Bangladesh defence ministry study released past month.

The exile campy houses radical who fled from Myanmar pursuing a subject crackdown against the Rohingya taste minority.

The Rohingya are Muslims successful mostly Buddhist Myanmar, wherever they person faced persecution for generations.

The latest exodus of Rohingya escaping to Bangladesh began successful August 2017, aft Myanmar's subject brutally retaliated erstwhile a Rohingya insurgent radical launched attacks connected respective constabulary posts.