The fate of Iraq’s latest elections has become fraught following a deliberate arson attack on the ballot boxes storage center in the Rusafa district of Baghdad on June 10.

The facility exposed to the fire contained some 1.1 million of the overall 1.8 million votes from the Baghdad constituency. Baghdad is crucial to forming power in Iraq’s parliament as the district holds 71 of the total 329 seats. Votes from the Rusafa district alone account for around 40 seats and could alter the course of the future government.

The extent of the ballot losses remains unknown, but the head of the Independent High Electoral Commission, Riyadh al-Badran, claimed June 11 that 95% of the boxes had escaped the flames. The commission also announced in a statement that it “possesses backup copies of the results in the national office in Baghdad.” Meanwhile, Iraq’s interior minister stated, “We have taken control of the situation.” He added that there was “no burning of any ballots,” and that only electronic counting and sorting devices were affected by the fire, not the ballots themselves. However, political forces have cast doubt on the credibility of these disparate claims, demanding that a full re-election be staged and warning that the country faces the risk of igniting civil war.

Following the fire, the speaker of the outgoing parliament, Salim al-Jabouri, called for “a redo of the elections that have been proved rigged, distorting the results and the will of the Iraqi people in a deliberate and dangerous manner. Those who contributed to this act of fraud and vandalism must be prosecuted.” Jabouri claimed that the incident was “planned [and] deliberately intended to conceal cases of fraud and falsification of votes and to deceive the Iraqi people, manipulating their choices and their will.”