Fire destroys 50 shelters in Myanmar camp

A fire destroyed about 50 shelters on Tuesday in a camp for internally displaced people in Myanmar's western Rakhine State, a witness said.

The witness, Khin Maung Myint, said that the fire broke out at the Baw Du Pha 2 camp near the state capital, Sittwe.

Firefighters were able to extinguish the blaze and were treating some of the injured, he added. The cause of the fire is still not known.

Typically, the shelters that were destroyed in the fire can hold up to six families.

Authorities in the area have not yet commented on the incident.

Camps in the region mostly shelter members of Rohingya Muslim community who were displaced by unrest between Buddhists and Muslims that left hundreds dead in 2012.

Myanmar's Rohingya population is stateless and thousands have fled persecution and poverty, often by boat to other parts of Southeast Asia.

Some 125,000 Rohingya remain displaced and face severe travel restrictions as they are living in camps.

More than 100,000 Rohingya have been forced to live in apartheid-like conditions since the unrest.

Their movement and access to services, including health care, is severely restricted by authorities in the Buddhist-majority country.

Myanmar does not formally recognise the Rohingya as one of the country's patchwork of ethnic minorities.

A rising tide of Buddhist nationalism has in recent years has deepened hostility towards the group, most of whom are rendered stateless by a web of citizenship laws.

Many Rohingya trace their roots in the country back for generations.

But officials routinely refer to them as "Bengalis," a pejorative term identifying them as outsiders from neighbouring Bangladesh.