Manila Condos and Properties

Myanmar refugee

camp in Thailand

(AFP) – 1 hour ago

BANGKOK — A huge fire

swept through a crowded

Thai border camp home to

thousands of refugees from

neighbouring Myanmar on

Thursday, destroying

hundreds of homes, the

authorities said.

The blaze started at about

midday (0500 GMT) and

quickly spread around the

Umpiem Mai refugee camp,

said Poth Ruwaranan, head

of Phop Phra district in

western Tak province.

He told AFP that there were

no reports of casualties, but

Sally Thompson of the Thai

Burma Border Consortium

(TBBC), which provides food

and shelter at ten border

camps, said she had heard of

children suffering burns.

"Patients in the clinic have

been evacuated and are

staying in the food

warehouse," she said.

Thompson said more than

1,000 houses, three mosques

and two nursery schools

were destroyed -- "about a

third of the camp" -- while

Poth put the figure at 300

homes.

"We believe that the fire

started when they cooked. As

the houses are made of

bamboo and leaves, it spread

too fast, especially with the

hot and dry weather and

strong wind," the district

chief said.

Residents were not allowed

to leave the camp, so those

who lost their homes would

have to stay with relatives or

friends on the site, he added.

Camp manager Khetthai

Wongsuwan later said the

fire had been extinguished

and food was being

distributed for those

affected.

"We will provide materials

such as wood and equipment

for them to build new

houses in the same place,"

he said.

More than 17,000 displaced

people from Myanmar were

staying in the Umpiem Mai

camp as of December,

according to figures from the

TBBC, a group of

international non-

governmental organisations

operating along the border.

The 10 camps were housing a

total of about 136,000

people, who first began

arriving in the 1980s. Many of

the refugees have fled

conflict zones in ethnic areas

of Myanmar, also known as

Burma.

About 88,000 camp residents

have been registered with

the UN as refugees, but while

an ongoing resettlement

programme has allowed tens

of thousands to move to

third countries, they have

been replaced by new

arrivals trickling across the

Moei river.

Many others live illegally

outside the camps, where

families live cheek-by-jowl in

simple bamboo-and-thatch

dwellings.

After a new quasi-civilian

government replaced the

long-ruling junta in Myanmar

last year, Thailand

announced that it wanted to

shut the border camps when

it was safe to do so, raising

concern among their

residents.

Many of the refugees are

from Myanmar's eastern

Karen state, where a major

rebel group, the Karen

National Union (KNU) signed

a ceasefire deal with the new

regime in January after

decades of civil war.

But deep distrust about the

authorities' sincerity lingers

in ethnic conflict zones, and

the KNU has described the

peace deal as "fragile".