Six people died and hundreds were evacuated after a fire on Tuesday at a hospital in the southern Malaysian state of Johor, officials said.

Seven people were trapped by the fire inside the second-floor intensive-care unit of the Sultanah Aminah Hospital in Johor Bahru, bordering Singapore, the Malaysian Fire and Rescue Department said on its official Twitter account.

Only one person was rescued safely, it said.

It was unclear what started the fire, or whether the casualties were patients or hospital staff.

The evacuated patients were being taken to other hospitals in the state, Health Ministry director-general Noor Hisham Abdullah said in a statement.