Huge fire broke out in the early hours of Sunday morning destroying the Rohingyas’ camp in New Delhi. Around 226 Rohingya refugees lived here.
Although, there has not been any loss of life, the residents at the camp in New Delhi’s Okhla area said that the fire had destroyed everything they possessed including clothes and documents. Already persecuted in their country of origin, Myanmar, Rohingyas had found shelter in New Delhi among other places in India.
No one knows how the fire began but what was visible early on Sunday morning was blackened surfaced with the makeshift homes of the refugees having turned into ashes.
“We are yet to ascertain the cause of the fire. It began at 3 am. We called the fire station by 3.15 am and they arrived around 3.55 am. Fire tenders took almost four hours to douse the fire in the area where around 60 families live. In the camp all the homes were made of asbestos sheets and they are all completely gutted,” Ali Johar, a resident of the camp and an UN volunteer was quoted by National Herald.
Johar says that the origin of the fire was at the rear side of the camp where the toilets are located. He said, “The toilets were the first ones gutted. The fire spread so rapidly that we got no chance to salvage our belongings. We could barely save our lives. Some of the residents were able to save their documents, but most weren’t. The fire was about to spread to a nearby slum where Indians reside, but by then the fire tenders arrived and they were able to contain it.
Local residents and NGOs working in the area have rushed to their help with food and other relief materials. Donations are also being collected to rehabilitate the refugees at the same place in a timeliness manner.
Rohingyas fled Myanmar after the state-sponsored Buddhist terrorists killed hundreds of innocent people including women and children. Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who’s now the administrative head of Myanmar, earned global condemnation for her complicity to the crimes against humanity.
