Crisis Over Suspected Poisoning of Iran Girls Grows

More than 50 schools around the nation are investigating incidents
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Mar 5, 2023 9:31 AM CST
Crisis Over Suspected Poisoning of Iran Girls Grows
Iranian schoolgirls in a file photo.   (AP Photo/Hasan Sarbakhshian)

A crisis over suspected poisonings targeting Iranian schoolgirls escalated Sunday as authorities acknowledged over 50 schools were struck in a wave of possible cases. The poisonings have spread further fear among parents as Tehran has faced months of unrest It remains unclear who or what is responsible since the alleged poisonings began in November in the Shiite holy city of Qom, per the AP. Reports now suggest schools across 21 of Iran's 30 provinces have seen suspected cases, with girls' schools the site of nearly all the incidents.

The attacks have raised fears that other girls could be poisoned apparently just for going to school. Education for girls has never been challenged in the over 40 years since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Iran has been calling on the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan to have girls and women return to school. Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi on Saturday said without elaborating that investigators had recovered “suspicious samples” in the course of their investigations into the incidents, according to the state-run IRNA news agency. He called for calm among the public, while also accusing the “enemy’s media terrorism” of inciting more panic over the alleged poisonings.

However, it wasn't until the poisonings received international media attention that hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi announced an investigation. Vahidi said at least 52 schools had been affected by suspected poisonings. Iranian media reports have put the number of schools at over 60. Jamileh Kadivar, a prominent former reformist lawmaker at Tehran’s Ettelaat newspaper, wrote Saturday that another possibility is “mass hysteria." There have been previous cases of this over the last decades, most recently in Afghanistan from 2009 through 2012. Then, the World Health Organization wrote about so-called “mass psychogenic illnesses” affecting hundreds of girls in schools across the country.

(More Iran stories.)

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