<div style="text-align: justify; "><b style="font-size: 1rem;">Thousands of people have been left without shelter after a massive fire broke out in a crowded Rohingya refugee camp in southeastern Bangladesh.</b><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The blaze, which broke out on Sunday, engulfed some 2,000 shelters at a camp known as Cox's Bazar.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Hundreds of people have now returned to the area to see what they can salvage from the ruins.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It is estimated around 12,000 people, most of whom escaped violence in neighbouring Myanmar, are now homeless.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The cause of the fire is not yet known and no casualties have been reported.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The blaze started at about 14:45 local time (08: 45 GMT) and quickly tore through the bamboo-and-tarpaulin shelters, an official said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Some 2,000 shelters have been burnt, leaving about 12,000 forcibly displaced Myanmar nationals shelterless," Mijanur Rahman, Bangladesh's refugee commissioner, told AFP news agency.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The blaze was brought under control within three hours but at least 35 mosques and 21 learning centres for the refugees were also destroyed, he added.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Photos are now emerging that show the extent of the devastation.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Hrusikesh Harichandan, from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, told the BBC there had been "massive damage" to the camp.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">He said basic services such as water centres and testing facilities had also been affected.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"My shelter was gutted. [My shop] was also burnt," Mamun Johar, a 30-year-old Rohingya man, told AFP.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"The fire took everything from me, everything."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Thick black clouds were seen rising above Camp 11, one of many in the border district where more than a million Rohingya refugees live.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The camps, overcrowded and squalid, are vulnerable to fires.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Between January 2021 and December 2022, there were 222 fire incidents in the Rohingya camps including 60 cases of arson, according to a Bangladesh defence ministry report released last month.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In March 2021, at least 15 people were killed and some 50,000 were displaced after a huge fire tore through a camp in the settlement.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The refugee camp, said to be the world's largest, houses people who fled from Myanmar following a military crackdown against the Rohingya ethnic minority.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Rohingya are Muslims in largely Buddhist Myanmar, where they have faced persecution for generations.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The latest exodus of Rohingya escaping to Bangladesh began in August 2017, after Myanmar's military brutally retaliated when a Rohingya insurgent group launched attacks on several police posts.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Many of those who lived there can be seen picking through the charred area, where only metal struts and singed corrugated roofing remains. BBC</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">bnbd24/kh</div>