A fire is seen at a Balukhali refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh on Mar 22, 2021 in this still image obtained from a social media video. Image:

 

A fire is seen at a Balukhali refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh on Mar 22, 2021 in this still image obtained from a social media video. Image:

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She did not provide any estimate of how many children had been left on their own.The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, also said children were looking for their parents, in another trauma for families that fled from their homes in western Myanmar when the military there launched an offensive against Muslim insurgents in 2017.

"This is a very difficult situation and our heart goes out to the thousands of refugees who have yet met another disaster," UNHCR official Ita Schuette said in a video message posted on Twitter from Cox's Bazar.

A Rohingya woman sits on the ground with her belongings as her shelter has been burned down following a fire that broke out at a Rohingya refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, Mar 23, 2021. Photo:

About 1 million Rohingya refugees live in camps in Cox's Bazar with little hope of returning to their homes in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, where most have been refused citizenship and face persecution.

Some witnesses said that barbed wire fencing put up around the camp had trapped many people during the fire.

International humanitarian agencies have called for the removal of the wire but the deputy Bangladesh government official in charge of the refugees, Mohammad Shamsud Douza, said the fencing was not a major issue.

Aftermath of a fire at Rohingya Balukhali refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh on Mar 23, 2021 in this still image obtained from a social media video. Photo: 

"It spread so quickly that some people who could not come out instantly died," he said. "It was not the barbed wire fencing that prevented them from escaping."

Citing overcrowding in the camps, Bangladesh has been trying to move 100,000 Rohingya to a remote Bay of Bengal island.

A combination image of satellite photos shows Balukhali camp, a camp for Rohingya refugees, before (left) and after a fire near Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, Nov 12, 2020 and Ma 23, 2021. Photo:

Aid groups say the flood-prone, low-lying Bhasan Char island, which only emerged from the see about 20 years ago, risks being overwhelmed by storms and refugees should not be housed there.

Despite that, and the reluctance of many Rohingya to move, Bangladesh has transferred more than 13,000 refugees to the island since December.