Inter Sector Coordination Group on Tuesday said the death toll reached to 11 and 560 people injured in connection with Monday’s fire that swept through five Rohingya camps in Ukhia of Cox’s Bazar.
The fire displaced over 45,000 people and damaged around 10,000 shelters, the ISCG added.
Syed Tafhim, the national communication and public information officer at ISCG, however, said at 4:30pm on Tuesday also said ‘figures may change as assessments continued’.
‘Essential facilities including hospitals, distribution points, learning centres, women friendly services have been damaged in the fires – according to assessments so far.’
AFP adds: Officials said the blaze appeared to have started in one of the 34 camps -- which span about 8,000 acres (3,200 hectares) -- before spreading rapidly to three other sites despite desperate efforts to put out the flames.
Thick columns of smoke could be seen billowing from blazing shanties in videos shared on social media, as hundreds of firefighters and aid workers pulled refugees to safety.
Firefighters finally brought the blaze under control around midnight.
The cause of the fire was not known but police inspector Gazi Salahuddin said it spread after gas cylinders used for cooking exploded.
Mohammad Yasin, a Rohingya helping fight the fire, told AFP the blaze raged for more than 10 hours and was the worst he had seen.
A volunteer for Save the Children, Tayeba Begum, said ‘children were running, crying for their families’.
Refugees International said in a statement: ‘Many children are missing, and some were unable to flee because of barbed wire set up in the camps.’
This was echoed by Myo Min Khan, a Rohingya, who wrote on Facebook: ‘We were unable to flee because of the fence, my youngest daughter got injured badly.’
AFP was not independently able to verify the claims about the fence.
Police rejected the accusation, saying only a tiny part of the camp was fenced.
‘This tragedy is an awful reminder of the vulnerable position of Rohingya refugees who are caught between increasingly precarious conditions in Bangladesh and the reality of a homeland now ruled by the military responsible for the genocide that forced them to flee,’ Refugees International said.
The UN's International Organization for Migration said it has pledged $1 million to relief efforts but a further $20 million would be required to react to the most urgent needs.
It was the third blaze to hit the camps in four days, fire brigade official Sikder, who goes by only one name, told AFP.
Two big fires also hit the camps in January, leaving thousands homeless and gutting four UNICEF schools.
Amnesty International's South Asia campaigner, Saad Hammadi, tweeted that the ‘frequency of fire in the camps is too coincidental, especially when outcomes of previous investigations into the incidents are not known and they keep repeating’.
Rohingya leader Sayed Ullah demanded an immediate probe. ‘It is not clear why these fire incidents are happening repeatedly in the camps. It needs proper and complete investigation,’ he said.
The government has meanwhile been pushing for the refugees to be relocated to a remote island in the Bay of Bengal.
