Fire breaks out in overcrowded Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh | World News

A fire swept through a crowded Rohingya Muslim refugee camp in southern Bangladesh on Sunday, leaving thousands homeless, a fire official and the United Nations said.

There were no immediate reports of casualties at the Balukhali camp in Cox’s Bazar district, Fire Department official Emdadul Haque said.

Rohingya refugee volunteers are fighting the fire, with the agency and its partners providing support, the UN refugee agency in Bangladesh said in a tweet. It did not provide further details.

Over the decades, more than 1 million Rohingya refugees have fled Myanmar to Bangladesh, with some 740,000 of them beginning to cross the border in August 2017, when the Myanmar military launched a brutal crackdown.

The situation in Myanmar has deteriorated since the military took over in 2021, and attempts to repatriate refugees have also failed.

Last year, the United States said the oppression of the Rohingya in Myanmar amounted to genocide after American authorities confirmed that the military had committed mass atrocities against civilians in a systematic campaign against the minority. The Muslim Rohingya face widespread discrimination in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, where most are denied citizenship and many other rights.