Iran presents new cases of poisoning of girls

Tehran. Dozens of girls were intoxicated on Saturday in several schools in Irana country shaken for more than four months by mysterious student poisonings, local media reported.

Since the end of November, many schools, mostly for girls, have been affected by sudden poisonings caused by gases or toxic substances, causing malaise and fainting, sometimes followed by hospitalizations.

Quoted on Friday by state television, the head of the National Fact-Finding Commission, Deputy Hamidreza Kazemi, declared that the final report of this body would be published “within two weeks.”

At least “60 students were poisoned (on Saturday) at a girls’ school in Haftkel,” in the southwestern province of Khozestan, the Iribnews news agency said, citing a local official.

Other girls were also poisoned in “five schools in Ardabil, in the northwest”, where they showed “symptoms of anxiety, shortness of breath and headache”, the same source added.

In Urmia, the capital of the western (northwest) Azerbaijan province, “an unknown number” of primary school students were also affected “after a gas projection,” the Ilna agency said, without giving further details.

An official balance of March 7 indicated that “more than 5,000 students” had been poisoned in more than 230 establishments located in 25 provinces, of the 31 that the country has.

The poisonings had stopped at the beginning of March, after the announcement of a hundred arrests, but they started again three weeks later.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had called on March 6 for “severe penalties”, including the death penalty, against the people who would be held responsible for these poisonings.