WORLD NEWS | Fires hit overcrowded Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh

COX’S BAZAR (Bangladesh), March 5 (AP) – A fire ripped through a crowded Rohingya Muslim refugee camp in southern Bangladesh on Sunday, killing 10,000 people, a fire official and the United Nations said. Thousands were made homeless.

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

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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.

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The situation in Myanmar has deteriorated since the military took over in 2021, and attempts to repatriate them 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. (Associated Press)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)