Six people died in Tashkent’s Mirzo-Ulugbek district on Oct. 25, apparently from gas poisoning, the Interior Ministry said. The ministry said emergency services received a call at 9:53 a.m. about nine people found unconscious in a house in the Alisherobod mahalla, or neighborhood. The two-storey residential building, on an 800-square-meter plot, was under construction and connected to natural gas, the ministry added.

Six people died of poisoning of undetermined cause, according to the preliminary data. Two others were taken to the Republican Scientific Center of Emergency Medical Care, where staff told Gazeta on Oct. 25 that both were in intensive care. The ninth person’s condition was described as satisfactory at the time.

According to a preliminary list, the dead are men born in 1982, 2008, 2008, 2004, 2000 and 2000. The two hospitalized were born in 2000 and 2008. All eight people on the list lived in the Amudarya and Ellikkala districts of Karakalpakstan.

Officers from the Emergency Situations Ministry, the prosecutor’s office, the Interior Ministry, the State Security Service and other agencies went to the scene. The Interior Ministry said a forensic medical examination had been ordered and a pre-investigation inquiry was under way.

Emergency Situations Ministry officers had been visiting homes to warn about carbon monoxide poisoning. Residents said one officer on such a visit said the checks were being carried out on the “personal instruction of the emergency situations minister” and that 12 people had been poisoned by carbon monoxide in a single mahalla in the capital.