Iran: Dozens of cases of poisoning of schoolgirls have yet to be identified

Dozens of young girls were poisoned to death in several schools across Iran on Saturday, in a country rocked by more than four months of mysterious schoolgirl drug overdoses, local media reported.

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Since the end of November, many schools, attended mostly by girls, have suffered sudden poisoning from gas or poisonous substances, causing dizziness and fainting, and sometimes hospitalization.

In this case, the chairman of the National Fact-Finding Commission, M.P. Hamidreza Kazemi was quoted by state television on Friday as saying the organization’s final report would be released “in two weeks.”

At least “60 students were poisoned (Saturday)” at a girls’ school in Haftkel in Khuzestan province (southwest), Iribnews news agency reported, citing a local official.

Schoolgirls have been poisoned in “five schools in Ardabil in the northwest,” where they presented “symptoms of anxiety, suffocation and headaches,” the same source added.

In Urmia, the capital of West Azerbaijan (Northwest) province, an “unknown number” of primary school students were also affected “after a gas project”, the Ilna agency indicated for its part, without further details.

An official report dated March 7 said that “more than 5,000 students” were drunk in more than 230 institutions located in 25 provinces in 31 provinces in the country. Drug addiction stopped in early March after a hundred arrests were reported and resumed three weeks later.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called on March 6 for “severe punishments” up to the death penalty against those responsible for the poisoning.

The case began two months after the start of the protest movement in Iran, on September 16, when a young woman named Mahsa Amini died in Iran wearing a veil.