Tehran, March 5. Iran suffered this Sunday new cases of gas poisoning in several female education centers in which hundreds of female students were again poisoned throughout the Persian country.
Shortly after midnight, female students in a student dormitory in the city of Urmia, northwestern Iran, were poisoned “with an unknown agent” and 29 of the 450 female students were hospitalized, reported Shargh daily.
In the northeast town of Neyshabur, 50 high school students showed symptoms of poisoning this morning, 10 of whom were taken to a medical center, said Javad Hosseini, an official at the University of Medical Sciences. from nearby Mashad. .
In nearby Mashad, Iran’s spiritual capital, an unknown number of female students were also poisoned at another high school, Hosseini said, according to the Tasnim news agency.
“The students are suffering from psychological problems and have no physical ailments,” said Hosseini, who said a clinical investigation is needed to determine if they were poisoned.
In central Kashan, a poisoning at a girls’ school sparked parental protests outside the offices of the local education department, Shargh said.
The 1500tasvir collective of activists on Sunday raised cases of poisoning in dozens of cities and shared videos on the networks that showed chaos in educational centers, students in ambulances and girls complaining of breathing difficulties.
WAVE OF POISONING
The wave of suspected gas poisonings in women’s educational institutions began in November in the Shia holy city of Qom and has escalated in recent days.
So far, more than 1,000 female students have been poisoned in dozens of schools and institutes and suffered from headaches, palpitations, nausea, dizziness and sometimes inability to move their extremities after perceived a smell of rotten oranges and cleaning products.
The Iranian government claimed on Sunday that the poisonings are an operation of “psychological contamination” which aims to rekindle the protests sparked by the death in September of Mahsa Amini.
The Interior Ministry said in a statement that it had found “suspicious samples” in some female educational centers, which are being analyzed in “prestigious laboratories” to identify the cause of the poisoning.
According to data from the wallet, there were gas attacks in 52 schools, an unknown number of female students were poisoned and 28 students were hospitalized, figures far removed from those provided by Iranian media and militant groups.
The attacks are fueling popular discontent, especially among parents, given the inefficiency of the authorities to stop the attacks which seem intended to paralyze the schooling of students.
In Iran, the education of women has not been questioned in 43 years of existence of the Islamic Republic and some parents link the poisonings to the protests with a marked feminist tone in recent months.
Students from schools and institutes took part in these demonstrations, took off their veils, shouted “woman, life, freedom” and cut their sleeves at the portraits of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and Ayatollah Ruholá Khomeini . EFE
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