“Nine prisoners were killed and 14 were injured by a fire caused by electrical problems in a prison in Baladiyat, eastern Baghdad,” Justice Ministry spokesman Haidar Al-Saadi said in a text message. He did not give any more details about the nature of the electricity problems.

At least 31 other inmates were treated for smoke inhalation and other injuries from the blaze that broke out at dawn in an Interior Ministry jail in Baladiyat, a mostly Shiite neighborhood in eastern Baghdad.

Lawmaker Hakim Al-Zamili, who represents the nearby Sadr City area, said the fire was caused by an electrical malfunction. He confirmed the death toll.

Al-Zamili called on authorities to speed up the investigations of some of the inmates, many of whom he said have not yet been charged and may be innocent. He also sought to quell speculation that the inmates may have started the fire in an attempted prison break.

“They could have escaped, but they did not,” Al-Zamili said. “We understand that there is frustration and the prisons suffer from shortcomings, but the real reason of the fire is a short circuit.”

He said the surviving inmates in the area where the fire broke out have been transferred to elsewhere in the prison.

It took firefighters about an hour to extinguish the blaze, and the injured and dead were taken to Kindi and Ibin Nafees hospitals.

Iraq’s fractured penal system means detention facilities are run variously by the Ministries of Justice, Interior and Defense.

An official at Ibn Nafis hospital in central Baghdad said it had treated four prison guards for their wounds from the fire.