Bangladesh

Cox's Bazar resort fire kills 10 tourists; safety notice was ignored

The blaze tore through the wooden Tuptup Resto and Resort at Inani on Saturday morning. The Fire Service says the building had no licence and had been flagged as hazardous in June.

ScrollBeat DeskPublished: 17 Oct 2026, 21:42

Flames and heavy smoke rise from a burning multi-storey wooden resort at Inani in Cox's Bazar, photographed soon after the 17 October 2026 fire broke out. — Flames and thick smoke rise from the Tuptup Resto and Resort at Inani in Cox's Bazar soon after a fire broke out on 17 October 2026. Handout photograph by Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha (BSS). BSS

At a glance

A fire at the Tuptup Resto and Resort at Inani in Cox's Bazar killed 10 tourists on 17 October 2026.
The Fire Service says the wooden resort had no fire safety licence and ignored a June notice that flagged it as hazardous.
Six injured people were taken to Cox's Bazar Sadar Hospital; police detained the resort's manager.

A fire tore through a wooden beach resort at Inani in Cox's Bazar early on Saturday, killing 10 tourists and injuring several others, the Fire Service and Civil Defence said.

The blaze broke out at the three-storey Tuptup Resto and Resort on Patuartek beach, beside the Marine Drive road in Ukhiya upazila, shortly after 7:00am. The Fire Service said it received the first report at 7:25am; two units from the Ukhiya station reached the scene around 8:00am and brought the fire under control by about 10:00am. The nearest fire station was about 22 kilometres away.

Six of the dead have been identified as Israt Jahan Maliha, 30, and Milita Mehzabin Alvi, 23, of Banasree in Dhaka; Laila Jahan Nabila, 27, and Nafisa Mim, 27, of Dhaka's Khilgaon; and Fariha Kabir, 33, and Faizan Ahmed, 5, of Chuadanga. Six members of one family were among the victims. Two were university students: Nafis Tihami of Dhaka University and Laila Jahan Nabila of Jagannath University.

Six injured people were taken to Cox's Bazar Sadar Hospital. Five were admitted with burns covering about 5 per cent of their bodies, and one was treated for a fall injury and released, a hospital official said.

Fire Service and Civil Defence Director General Brigadier General Sultanul Afreen Junaid said the resort had been operating without a fire safety licence. Inspectors who visited it in June flagged the building as hazardous and served a notice on 11 June, but the business kept running, he said. The resort had a restaurant on the ground floor and guest rooms above it.

The cause of the fire is still under investigation. Cox's Bazar Deputy Commissioner Md A Mannan said it was suspected to have started at a stove in the resort's kitchen, and a five-member committee has been formed to investigate. Police detained the resort's manager, Mohammad Suman. Civil Aviation and Tourism Minister M Rashiduzzaman Millat directed the authorities to trace any missing people and establish the cause of the blaze.

Sources & further reading

Death toll rises to 10 in Cox's Bazar resort fire 10 dead as blaze destroys Cox's Bazar resort that had no fire safety licence Fire breaks out at Cox's Bazar resort, 10 dead, six victims identified

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Iran says two oil tankers hit mines in Strait of Hormuz as waterway stays shut

The Revolutionary Guards say both tankers caught fire after striking naval mines on Saturday, one of them carrying more than 2 million barrels of crude. The US military disputes the account and says projectiles, not mines, are hitting the vessels.

ScrollBeat Desk17 Oct 2026, 23:25Open this article

Satellite view of the Strait of Hormuz between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula, taken by NASA's Terra satellite on 2 December 2020. Representative image of the waterway. NASA / MODIS, public domain. NASA / MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center (public domain)

Iran's Revolutionary Guards said on Saturday that two oil tankers caught fire after striking naval mines in the Strait of Hormuz, the latest in a string of attacks on shipping in the waterway at the centre of the US-Iran war.

The IRGC Navy said the second supertanker, carrying more than 2 million barrels of crude oil, suffered a massive explosion in its engine room after hitting a mine while taking what it called an unauthorised route, with its tracking and radar systems switched off. Iran's state-run Press TV shared footage it said showed the vessel on fire. The Guards did not name or flag the tankers, and there was no independent confirmation of the incident.

The claim is disputed. US Central Command says it has cleared the strait of naval mines and that vessels are being struck by projectiles rather than mines. It said a container ship that sank this week, the M/V GFS Pride, was hit by an IRGC projectile, not a mine as Iran had said.

The two sides also give sharply different accounts of traffic through the strait. The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations, a Western maritime security body, reported at least 12 ships attacked in the week to 16 October, while warning that most crews were refusing to report incidents. US Central Command chief Brad Cooper said 400 ships and 100 million barrels of oil had moved through the strait over the past week and that the waterway is 'controlled by the United States and our regional partners, not Iran'. Tehran says Washington is exaggerating its progress.

Iran has kept the strait restricted since 28 February, when the United States and Israel began strikes on Iranian territory. Oil flows through Hormuz were about 11.6 million barrels per day in the seven days to 13 October, roughly 68 per cent of the 17.1 million-barrel pre-war baseline, according to the analysis firm Kpler, and Brent crude touched 110 dollars a barrel on Friday for the first time since May.

Diplomacy has not stopped entirely. Messages are still being relayed between Tehran and Washington by regional mediators including Pakistan and Qatar, though no breakthrough is expected soon.

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CUET team wins international mortar competition in Atlanta

Team CUET C took first place overall at the Fall 2026 American Concrete Institute Mortar Workability Competition and also finished second for economical design. A second Bangladeshi team, from IUT, placed fourth.

ScrollBeat Desk17 Oct 2026, 23:24Open this article

The civil engineering building at Chittagong University of Engineering and Technology (CUET), whose student team won an international concrete competition in Atlanta. Representative campus photograph. Photo: কামরুল ইসলাম শাহীন, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. কামরুল ইসলাম শাহীন / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

A student team from Chittagong University of Engineering and Technology (CUET) won first place overall at the Fall 2026 American Concrete Institute (ACI) Mortar Workability Competition in Atlanta, the university and the state news agency BSS said.

Team CUET C also finished second in the economical design category. The competition ran from 11 to 14 October alongside ACI's Fall convention, and 40 teams from around the world reached the final round after a selection process.

Judges gave the greatest weight to flowability, which accounted for 50 per cent of the total score, and to stability at 20 per cent. The remaining points were split among report quality (15 per cent), carbon emissions (10 per cent) and cost-effectiveness (5 per cent).

A second Bangladeshi team, from the Islamic University of Technology (IUT), placed fourth overall and took second place in the environmental design category as well as a judges' choice award in the Aesthetics in Concrete competition. Between them, the two teams representing the ACI Bangladesh Chapter won four awards.

The CUET team was advised by Dr GM Sadikul Islam, a professor in CUET's Department of Civil Engineering and faculty adviser to its ACI student chapter. The IUT team was advised by Prof Dr Tarek Uddin, president of the ACI Bangladesh Chapter.

Swarup Chandra Modak, a member of the winning team, said the competition had shown the students what they were capable of and that, with the right resources and facilities, they could demonstrate that competence anywhere in the world. Prof Sadikul Islam said CUET's ACI chapter had won six international awards since it was founded in 2018, all in online competitions, and that a first in-person win on American soil had long been a dream.