ALGIERS -- A fire ripped through an Algerian high security jail, killing 14 prisoners and injuring 11 others, Algeria's official news agency APS said on Wednesday.

APS said the fire, at Serkadji Prison in Algiers on Tuesday night, appeared to have been started by prisoners who had set their mattresses ablaze after seeing a 19-year-old inmate attempting to kill himself, Reuters reported.

More than 90 people, most of them prisoners, died at the jail in 1994 when detainees clashed with troops in a failed mass breakout.

Most of the detainees in Serkadji are Islamists, many of them sentenced to death or serving life sentences for their roles in guerrilla activities.

Army officer Lembarek Boumaarafi, sentenced to death for killing President Mohamed Boudiaf in 1992, is also held in the century-old Serkadji.

Algeria has carried out no death sentences since 1993, human rights activists say.

It was not immediately clear whether Boumaarafi was among the casualties. He survived the failed breakout in 1994.

A similar fire killed 22 prisoners and injured 20 others four weeks ago in Chelghoum el Aid, a town 300 km (190 miles) east of Algiers.

Justice Minister Ahmed Ouyahia, who visited Serkadji Prison after the fire, vowed to improve old and overcrowded prisons in the North African state.

The number of prisoners in Algeria, including Islamist detainees, is about 40,000 -- scattered across the country's 145 prisons with a capacity of 34,000.

The government plans four new prisons with a total detention capacity of 4,000, officials say.