Dozens of schoolgirls were poisoned on Tuesday, February 28, in the school of Khayyam, in the city of Pardis, east of Tehran, following a series of similar attacks elsewhere in Iran, announced a local media.
“So far, thirty-five students have been transferred to hospital and emergency services are present in the school to control the situation”, said the Tasnim news agency. None of these schoolgirls was in a worrying state following having breathed in their establishment gaseous substances which remain mysterious.
This case of collective intoxication began at the end of November 2022, when the media reported the first cases of poisoning by the respiratory tract of hundreds of young girls aged around 10 in schools in the holy city of Qom, in central Iran. Some were briefly hospitalized.
The Ministry of Health explained on Sunday that “certain individuals” sought, by this action, to “close all schools, especially girls’ schools”. For this they use “available chemical compounds” on the market, he said, excluding substances “for military use”.
Silence from the authorities
The case caused a wave of anger in the country, where voices denounced the silence of the authorities in the face of the growing number of schools affected. It comes as Iran has been shaken by a protest movement since the death, on September 16, 2022, of Mahsa Amini, a young woman detained by the morality police who accused her of having broken the strict dress code imposing in particular on women wearing the veil in public.
Authorities have announced an investigation into the origins of the poisoning, but no arrests have been announced at this stage. The FARS agency announced the holding of“an emergency meeting” to Parliament to investigate the matter, with the participation of the Ministers for Education, Intelligence and Health.
Speaker of Parliament Bagher Ghalibaf said on Tuesday that “only the two cities of Qom and Boroujerd”in the west of the country, had “been targeted”reported the official agency Irna.
But parliamentarian Abdolali Rahimi said the number of towns affected was “greater than two”stating that students from Kavar (South) had also been poisoned.
Qom MP Ahmad Amiri Farahani denounced the attacks as a “irrational act” and specified that the inhabitants of the holy city “supported girls’ education”. For her part, the former vice-president, the reformer Massoumeh Ebtekar, urged the government “to put an end once and for all to the fanatic misogynists”.
A Shiite dignitary, Ayatollah Javad Alavi-Boroujerdi, for his part, regretted the “contradictory statements by the authorities” regarding the origin of the case. “One official cites intentional poisoning while another blames the malfunctioning of the heating system… Such contradictions reinforce people’s distrust of the state”he judged, according to the Shafaqna agency.
