(Reuters) <\/p>\n\n\n\n
KUALA LUMPUR, April 19 – Thousands of people have been displaced \u200bafter a fire destroyed around 1,000 homes \u200cin a coastal village in Malaysia’s Sabah state on Borneo island on Sunday, the fire department said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Authorities were notified \u200bof the fire in Sandakan district at \u200baround 1.32 a.m. (1732 GMT), the district’s fire \u2060and rescue chief Jimmy Lagung said in a \u200bstatement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cStrong winds and the close proximity of the houses \u200bcaused the fire to spread rapidly, while low tide conditions also made it difficult to obtain an open water \u200bsource,\u201d Lagung said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The fire broke out in one \u200bof Sabah’s water villages, which feature wooden houses built on \u200cstilts \u2060and are home to some of the country’s poorest communities, including many stateless and indigenous groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Over 9,000 residents have been affected by the fire though \u200bno deaths \u200bhave been \u2060reported, Sandakan police said, according to state news agency Bernama.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar \u200bIbrahim said the federal government was \u200bcoordinating \u2060with Sabah authorities to provide basic assistance and temporary relocation for those affected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“The priority now is the \u2060safety \u200bof the victims and immediate \u200bassistance on the ground,” he said in a Facebook post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(Reuters) KUALA LUMPUR, April 19 – Thousands of people have been displaced \u200bafter a fire destroyed around 1,000 homes \u200cin a coastal village in Malaysia’s Sabah state on Borneo island on Sunday, the fire department said. Authorities were notified \u200bof the fire in Sandakan district at \u200baround 1.32 a.m. (1732 GMT), the district’s fire \u2060and rescue chief Jimmy Lagung said in a \u200bstatement. \u201cStrong winds and the close proximity of the houses \u200bcaused the fire to spread rapidly, while low tide conditions also made it difficult to obtain an open water \u200bsource,\u201d Lagung said. The fire broke out in one… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":56797,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-in-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56796"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56798,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56796\/revisions\/56798"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/56797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}