DM Monitoring
NEW DELHI: A massive fire has destroyed a Rohingya refugee camp in the Indian capital, New Delhi, leaving hundreds of people homeless, local media reported on Sunday.
The blaze broke out at about 11:30pm on Saturday and quickly spread through the camp, reducing 55 ramshackle shelters to ashes in the Madanpur Khadar area in the capital city’s south. No deaths or serious injuries have been reported in the fire, the second time the camp has been reduced to ashes since 2018.
The fire service department of the national capital said that it put 15 fire tenders into service and brought the blaze under control in about six hours. “We rushed to the spot quickly and started dousing the flames,” Sandeep, an operator at the Delhi Fire Service, told reporters on Sunday. The fire tore through the camp, home to 55 families, filling the sky with plumes of smoke and flames as refugees scrambled to safety, crying for help.
Sufia Khatoon, 32, was asleep inside her hut along with her physically challenged mother and her child when the fire broke out. It started in an abandoned hut, she said.
“When we saw the fire, I held my mother’s hand and lifted my child in my arms and ran away to safety outside the camp,” Khatoon said. “We lost everything. The fire destroyed even the little cash that we had kept for our daily needs. We don’t have a single Indian rupee to buy water.”
She appealed to the government and relief groups for help with food and shelter.
Undocumented refugees
Asif Mujtaba, a Delhi-based activist, told media that his group was one of the first to provide relief as soon as the flames were doused.
“We shifted those who needed medical attention to nearby hospitals, and arranged water and food for the refugees,” Mujtaba said, adding that he was reaching out to officials to help set up an interim relief camp for them, in the scorching summer heat. “We are also mapping out details of the families who suffered losses in the fire,” he said.
Another volunteer, Ahmad Kamal, opened the doors of his nearby hostel and sheltered some Rohingya for the night, providing them with food and water.
“We were hungry. Some people came here in the morning and gave us bananas and milk,” said refugee Tayyab Begum, 45.
An estimated 40,000 Rohingya refugees, many believed to be undocumented, live in camps across Indian cities, including Jammu, Hyderabad and Nuh.
