Bangladesh will expand a massive settlement under construction in its southernmost district to house 9,00,000 Rohingya Muslims, a Minister said, putting it on track to rival the world’s largest refugee camps.
Two thousand acres of land in Cox’s Bazar district were set aside last month for a new site to house 4,00,000 Rohingya who had fled ethnic bloodshed in neighbouring Myanmar since late August.
But space has been exhausted as the number of refugees exceeded half a million, putting immense strain on camps along the border that already hosted hundreds of thousands of Rohingya displaced from past violence in Rakhine State.
Mofazzal Hossain Chowdhury Maya, minister for disaster management and relief, said the estimated 8-900,000 refugees will be relocated to the new camp on the fringes of Kutupalong, the largest Rohingya settlement in the area. “Those who are living in scattered places... Would be brought into one place. That’s why more land is needed. Slowly all of them will come,” he said.