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Burnt shacks in the sprawling Balukhali settlement
Photo: Mahmud Hossain Opu / dpa
At least 2,000 makeshift shelters burned down in a fire at an overcrowded Rohingya refugee camp in south-east Bangladesh.
Sunday's fire in Cox's Bazar district has left nearly 10,000 people homeless, said Mohammad Shamsuddoza, a senior official with the local refugee commission.
It took firefighters several hours to bring the fire under control.
The UN refugee agency UNHCR even named around 12,000 homeless people on Twitter and announced that it was supporting the victims of the fire with its local partners.
Hospitals and educational institutions were also destroyed in the fire.
According to the police, the cause of the fire is still unclear.
So far there have been no reports of deaths or injuries.
Around a million Rohingya live in the world's largest concentration of refugee camps in Bangladesh.
Hundreds of thousands fled their predominantly Buddhist homeland of Myanmar in 2017 when the military launched an offensive against the Muslim minority.
The UN describes their persecution as genocide.
Bangladesh hopes that the Rohingya refugees will return to Myanmar.
So far, several repatriation attempts have failed due to security concerns.
kek/dpa
