By Ruma Paul
DHAKA (Reuters) – A fire that left thousands of Rohingya Muslims homeless in Bangladesh camps was a “planned act of sabotage”, a panel investigating the blaze said on Sunday.
Nearly 2,800 shelters and more than 90 facilities including hospitals and learning centres were destroyed in the fire on March 5, leaving more than 12,000 people without shelter, officials said.
More than 1 million Rohingya refugees live in tens of thousands of huts made of bamboo and thin plastic sheeting in camps in the border district of Cox’s Bazar, most having fled a military-led crackdown in Myanmar in 2017.
“The fire was a planned act of sabotage,” senior district government official Abu Sufian, head of the seven-member probe committee, told Reuters by phone from Cox’s Bazar.
He said the blaze broke out in several places at the same time, proving it was a planned act, adding it was a deliberate attempt to establish…
Read More
