By RIA Novosti
Moscow : More than 10,000 refugees from Bhutan have been left homeless by a blaze that destroyed most of their camp in southeast Nepal, local officials said on Monday.
The fire broke out in the Goldhap refugee camp on Saturday night, razing 80% of the camp to the ground and injuring seven refugees.
The refugees are ethnic Nepalese who were thrown out of Bhutan, a landlocked nation in the Himalayas, during the 1990s.
Only 228 of the 1,500 huts in the camp survived the fire. Local government and non-governmental organizations are taking urgent measures to provide food and temporary shelter. The cause of the fire is being investigated.
“This is a disaster and an absolutely traumatic event for the refugees,” the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Antonio Guterres, said in a statement.
He said the agency is doing everything possible to provide food and shelter for the camp’s residents.