The toll of victims of adulterated cocaine in Argentina rose to 24 dead Friday evening, February 4, while 23 people remained hospitalized in the greater Buenos Aires area, announced the provincial health ministry.
A previous report reported 23 deaths, before the death of a person who had been hospitalized on respiratory assistance, according to a press release from the ministry, which specifies that eight patients are still intubated at the hospital.
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The victims had consumed doses obtained in a known point of sale in "Puerta 8", an urban extension holding the slum, in the popular suburb of Loma Hermosa, about 40 km from the center of the Argentine capital.
They died for the most part far from the point of sale, 12 of them at home, before they could be hospitalized, either because alone, or because of the overwhelming effects - vascular, cardiac in particular - of the adulterated drug .
Two others died on the public highway.
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Thirteen people in total, arrested during various police operations since the start of the crisis, were to be heard by magistrates as part of the investigation into the origin of the murderous cocaine, indicated judicial sources quoted by the agency. Argentinian public Telam.
Among them is a known leader of a local drug trafficking ring in the northwest of greater Buenos Aires, a 33-year-old man nicknamed "El Paisa" (the peasant).
But at this stage, no link between the suspect and killer cocaine has been confirmed.
The substance with which the drug was cut has not yet been identified in the laboratory, but authorities believe it is an opiate derivative.
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