Fifteen family homes with some 160 rooms along the railway line in Russey Keo district’s Bak Touk village in Tuol Sangke I commune went up in smoke in a 1.30am fire on Monday.

However, district governor Chea Pisey told The Post on Monday that the “fire did not cause any injury or deaths”.

The zinc-roofed and wooden structures, he said, mostly housed migrants from across the Kingdom who had travelled to the capital to find jobs.

He said witnesses had claimed the blaze may have been caused by an electrical malfunction, but firefighters and police officials were still investigating.

Phnom Penh Fire Department chief Prum Yorn told The Post on Monday that the blaze was “extinguished at 3:15 am”.

“Preliminary investigations by fire specialists concluded that the blaze was caused by an electrical malfunction because the [layout] was untidy and [the units] had meandering electrical wiring that violated technical standards.

“Firefighters used 42 fire engines and took almost two hours to put out the blaze,” Yorn said.

He said this was the second fire to break out in the capital this month. The first one occurred on Sunday afternoon in Boeung Keng Kang district’s Boeung Keng Kang II commune, damaging two houses.