Fire in a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh kills 15

Updated: March 23, 2021 Published: March 23, 2021

Rohingya refugees look at the remains of Monday's fire at the Rohingya refugee camp in Balukhali, southern Bangladesh, Tuesday, March 23, 2021. The fire destroyed hundreds of shelters and left thousands homeless, officials and witnesses said. (AP Photo/ Shafiqur Rahman)

NEW DELHI - A devastating fire that tore through a sprawling Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh killed 15 people and left tens of thousands homeless, the United Nations said on Tuesday.

More than 550 people were injured and 400 remain missing. The fire began Monday afternoon at Balukhali camp, one of several such settlements in Cox’s Bazar in southern Bangladesh, which is home to nearly a million Rohingyas who fled from neighboring Myanmar.

Videos posted on social media showed thick, black plumes of smoke rising from the fire that ravaged the shanties in the densely populated camp.

An eyewitness told the BBC that she had never seen such a “devastating fire” while another described how thousands of settlements had been “reduced to ashes.”

Louise Donovan, a spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Cox’s Bazar, said at least 10,000 shelters were damaged and nearly 45,000 people displaced. The cause of the fire was not clear.

Government authorities and humanitarian workers on the ground pitched in with emergency supplies and drinking water.

Teams from the United Nations World Food Programme provided meals to those impacted while the Children’s Emergency Fund helped to evacuate the refugees.

“Our priority is to secure the immediate safety, security and protection of children in coordination with the concerned authorities, first responders and partner organizations in the UN and NGO community,” Tomoo Hozumi, UNICEF Representative in Bangladesh, said in a statement.

Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees fled to Bangladesh in 2017 after a military crackdown in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, where they are a persecuted minority group. U.N. experts have described the situation as “ethnic cleansing” and Myanmar has been accused of genocide under international law.

In another tragic incident in January over 3,500 refugees were left homeless after a fire gutted a nearby camp.

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The Washington Post’s Azad Majumdar contributed reporting from Dhaka, Bangladesh.