KATMANDU, NEPAL, March 2011: An official says a fire has swept through a refugee camp housing Bhutanese refugees in east Nepal. There are no immediate reports of casualties. Chief government administrator in the area Shahi Shekhar Shrestha says authorities are investigating the cause of Tuesday’s fire that destroyed 600 of the 750 huts and left thousands without a roof.
The camp at Goldhap is about 300 miles east of the capital, Kathmandu, and one of seven U.N.-run camps in Nepal.
More than 100,000 ethnic Nepalese were forced out of Bhutan in the early 1990s by authorities who wanted to impose the country’s dominant Buddhist culture on the Hindu minority. Most of the refugees have been living in Nepal ever since but nearly half now live in Western nations under resettlement programs.