Hundreds of students from girls’ schools in the holy city of Qom, in central Iran, have been poisoned in recent months by individuals to force the center to close, a health authority was quoted as saying by local media on Sunday.
Since the end of November, the media had reported dozens of cases of respiratory poisoning in Qom schools in girls as young as 10, some of whom had to be hospitalized.
The parents demonstrated on February 14 before the city government to “demand explanations” from the authorities, according to the official IRNA news agency.
The next day, government spokesman Ali Bahadori Jahromi announced that the Intelligence and Education ministries were “cooperating” to find the source of the poisonings.