A fire swept through Bajet Kandala in the early hours of Saturday due to an electrical short circuit, Haji Mirza, head of the area’s civil defence, told Rudaw’s Yousif Musa, adding that at least 12 tents were burnt.
Bajet Kandala houses 1,699 families, numbering 8,450 individuals, according to data provided by the UN’s Refugee Agency (UNHCR) for May.
Fires are a common occurrence in the Kurdistan Region’s displacement camps.
A fire in the same camp in late June caused the hospitalisation of at least ten people and the burning of 20 tents.
Thousands of Yazidis still remain in IDP camps despite Islamic State (ISIS) being driven away from their lands, as their homes are in need of reconstruction. The presence of several armed forces in the Yazidi heartland of Shingal is believed to be one of the key obstacles before the returning of people to the district.
Murad Ismael, a Yazidi activist, expressed his concern over repeated fire incidents in the Yazidi camps.
“I don’t know what to say. We are sick of our own voice[s] making appeals for help. I am done appealing. I am one of few people in [the] Yazidi community who still hold on ‘hope’ & that hope is just getting thinner every day,” he tweeted following the fire incident in Bajet Kandala.
He added that the money Iraqi politicians “steal from oil smuggling… is enough to bring all IDPs back to their homes & give each family $10k to rebuild their homes. Corruption has made them blind, senseless, & inhuman.”
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