At least ten people were killed and nine injured early on Saturday when fire tore through a beach resort built largely of bamboo and wood in Inani, near Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. The blaze broke out around 6:30 a.m. at Tuptup Resto and Resort near Patuartek Beach along the Marine Drive coastal highway, about 29 kilometres south of the resort town of Kolatoli.
Mohammad Atikur Rahman Majumder, chief of Ukhiya Police Station, said the fire erupted at the resort early Saturday morning. Fire Service spokesman Talha Bin Zasim confirmed the death toll around 1:30 p.m., hours after the flames began. Around 30 people were at the property when the fire started, according to the Dhaka Tribune. Only four or five managed to escape; the whereabouts and condition of the rest remained unclear through the afternoon. “The entire structure had been gutted by the blaze,” said Syed Muhammad Morshed Hossain, deputy assistant director of the Cox’s Bazar Fire Service.
Six bodies recovered, DNA tests to identify the dead
Cox’s Bazar Deputy Commissioner A Mannan said six bodies had been recovered so far, and DNA samples would be collected before they were handed over to families — some of the dead were burned beyond recognition. Nine injured people were taken to Cox’s Bazar Sadar Hospital. Five had burns covering about five percent of their bodies; another was hurt in a fall while fleeing and was discharged after first aid, the hospital’s resident medical officer Sabuktagin Mahmud Sohel told the local news outlet bdnews24. Among the injured was Shihab Uddin, a 31-year-old doctor at Dhaka’s Mugda Medical College Hospital, and his wife Nafiza Newaz Khan, 29.
Earlier in the day, authorities named six people as missing: Ishrat Jahan Maliha, 30, and Milita Mehezabin Alvi, 23, from Banasree in Dhaka; Layla Jahan Nabila, 27, and Nafista Mim, 27, from Khilgaon; and Fariha Kabir, 33, with five-year-old Faizan Ahmed, from Chuadanga. Officials said they were still trying to reach people who had been staying at the resort.
No fire-safety licence
Then came the detail that will decide where this story goes next: the resort did not hold a fire-safety licence. Fire Service and Civil Defence authorities said the property — described in most reports as a three-storey bamboo-and-wood structure — had been cautioned as recently as June this year for operating without one. The fire-safety licensing system is administered through Bangladesh’s official government portal and its civil defence authorities. The cause of the fire itself remains unknown and under investigation; Mannan said some suspected it may have started in the resort’s kitchen, but officials stressed nothing was confirmed.
It is not the first resort fire in the district. On Jan 15, 2025, a fire on Saint Martin’s Island damaged three resorts in the Galachipa area. On May 22 this year, a blaze destroyed three cottages and a storeroom at the Pacific Beach Lounge Eco Resort between Sugandha and Kolatoli points, with losses estimated at 60–70 lakh taka — roughly $50,000 to $58,000. The pattern raises hard questions about how tourist properties on one of the world’s longest beaches are licensed and inspected.
Why this matters beyond Bangladesh
Cox’s Bazar is home to a roughly 120-kilometre natural sea beach, among the longest in the world, and the engine of Bangladesh’s domestic tourism. Its Marine Drive strip — an 80-kilometre coastal highway running from Kolatoli to Teknaf — is lined with exactly the kind of open, bamboo-and-wood resorts that burn fast and leave little time to flee. The same formula repeats across South and Southeast Asia’s beach belts, where rapid tourism growth has outrun safety enforcement. The district is also known internationally as the host of the world’s largest refugee settlement at Kutupalong, but its tourism economy has grown on a separate, sunlit track — and disasters like this one expose how thin the regulatory cover beneath it can be.
For travellers anywhere, the Inani fire is a blunt reminder of a question worth asking before booking: is the place actually licensed? The Fire Service is continuing its investigation, and the search for the missing goes on. DNA testing will decide how the dead are returned to their families — the slowest, saddest part of a disaster like this.
