The President of Iran, Ebrahim Raisi, today (Thursday) officially ordered state institutions to investigate the case of the poisoning of hundreds of schoolgirls throughout the country, after at least 26 educational institutions announced that female students were harmed by exposure to an unknown chemical substance.
During the last three months, hundreds of students from all over Iran, the vast majority of them female students, arrived at hospitals and clinics suffering from severe nausea, vomiting, headaches, coughing, difficulty breathing and heart rhythm disorders.
Various hospitals across the country reported that these were symptoms of poisoning.
Iran: A student who was poisoned receives medical treatment
The phenomenon first began in the city of Qom in southern Iran, a city considered sacred to Shiite Islam and a stronghold of the religious population in Iran.
The vast majority of the injured students were released after receiving short medical treatment, but others were left under medical supervision for a few days.
The state news agency "IRNA" reported that President Raisi ordered the Ministry of the Interior to begin an investigation of the cases, with the aim of releasing a preliminary report to the public as soon as possible. Member of Parliament Shahrair Haidari, a member of the National Security Committee, claimed that according to "reliable sources" the number of female students who were affected from exposure to the unknown poison stands at nearly 900 girls.
President of Iran Raisi, photo: Reuters
It is not clear at this point what type of chemical the girls were exposed to, but experts in the country estimated that it was chlorine gas or another cleaning agent that had been turned into a gas.
Officials in the country admitted the phenomenon for the first time yesterday, despite the fact that it had been reported in underground media in the country for over a week.
Sources associated with the opposition have raised the possibility that this is the government's revenge on the young female students, many of whom participated in a protest against the imposition of religious laws in the country, a protest in which thousands were arrested, hundreds of protesters were killed and even some key activists were executed.
Another possibility that has been raised is that an extremist Shiite organization that opposes women's education is behind the string of poisoning cases.
So far no one has been arrested on suspicion of involvement in the events.
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