More cases of poisoning of schoolgirls in Iran after arrests

TEHRAN, Iran (AA) – In a fresh incident of poisoning in Iran, more than a dozen schoolgirls were transferred to a hospital on the outskirts of Tehran on Saturday, according to reports.

Local media cited officials in Pardis, a suburb located 17 kilometers (105 miles) northeast of Tehran, as saying that students at Khayyam Girls School complained of being unwell after an explosion of a homemade grenade.

The smell emanating from the explosion, they said, made students dizzy and at least 15 of them subsequently had to be taken to a local hospital.

All the students have since been discharged from the hospital and an investigation is underway.

In another incident reported from the northern Ardabil city on Saturday, a video published online showed a hospital ambulance parked outside a girls’ school.

Later in the day, doctors at Ardabil Medical Emergency Center told media people that several students had complained of symptoms such as anxiety, breathing difficulties and headache, and were admitted to hospitals.

Majority of these students have since been discharged from the hospitals, officials said.

Also on Saturday, reports of poisonings came from two girls’ schools in the southwestern Khuzestan province with a number of students taken to hospital for treatment.

The first cases of these serial poisonings were reported in November in the central city of Qom when dozens of schoolgirls were hospitalized after complaining of nausea, headache, breathing difficulties, cough, and body pain.

From Qom, the mysterious illness spread to other cities in subsequent weeks, including the capital Tehran.

Until March 20, when the Iranian calendar year ends, at least 1,200 schoolgirls had been admitted to hospitals in several Iranian cities after they complained of poisoning-related symptoms. Some reports put the figure for hospitalizations even higher.

A parliamentary fact-finding committee investigating the case is supposed to submit its report in May, according to committee head Hamidreza Kazemi.

Last month, Iran’s Interior Ministry announced the arrest of 100 people in multiple provinces including Tehran, Qom, Zanjan, Khuzestan, and West Azerbaijan in connection with poisonings.

The ministry had been asked by President Ebrahim Raisi on March 1 to investigate the cause of the mysterious illness after it sent shockwaves across the country and sparked protests.