Mon 10 Apr 2023:
Some 15 Iranian schoolgirls had been admitted to hospital in the outskirts of Tehran for treatment from poisoning, Anadolu news agency reported on Sunday.
Local media in Iran cited officials in the suburb of Pardis, 17 kilometers northeast of Tehran, saying that the students at Al Khayyam Girls School complained of being unwell after the explosion of an improvised grenade.
Gas came out of the explosion made students feel dizzy and at least 15 of them had been admitted to a local hospital for treatment.
Reports said that all of the girls recovered and were discharged from the hospital after a short time, and an investigation into the incident has been launched.
In another incident reported from the northern Ardabil city on Saturday, a video published online showed a hospital ambulance parking outside a girls school.
Doctors at Ardabil Medical Emergency Centre told local media that several students had complained of symptoms such as anxiety, breathing difficulties and headache, and were admitted to hospitals.
The majority of these students have since been discharged from the hospitals, officials told the Iranian mass media.
On the same day, 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 poisonings were reported in November 2022 in the central city of Qom when dozens of schoolgirls were hospitalized after complaining of nausea, headache, breathing difficulties, cough and body pain.
Anadolu said that the mysterious illness spread to other cities in following weeks, including the capital Tehran, sending ripples of shock.
By the end of the Iranian calendar year, 20 March, 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 much 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 the poisonings.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in his first comments on the issue on 6 March called it a “major and unforgivable sin,” instructing authorities to “seriously pursue the matter.”
“If it is proven that the students were poisoned, the perpetrators of this crime should be severely punished. There will be no amnesty for these people,” he said.
Iran’s judiciary chief Mohseni Ejei termed it an example of “corruption on earth” and warned of “exemplary punishment” to those found involved in it.
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