After a series of incidents of schoolgirls in Iran falling ill due to deliberate poisoning caused by “chemical compounds” have come to light, concerned parents protested in Iran's capital Tehran and other cities on Saturday.
Iran's president Ebrahim Raisi had on Wednesday ordered an investigation after hundreds of students at about 30 girls' schools across cities winded up in hospital beds. While there have been no casualties yet, children complained of headaches, heart palpitations, and feeling lethargic. Some described the symptoms as being unable to move, others were smelling tangerines, chlorine or cleaning agents.
According to a report by Reuters, the sickness affected more than 30 schools in at least 10 of Iran's 31 provinces on Saturday. Videos posted on social media showed parents gathered at schools to take their children home and some students being taken to hospitals by ambulance or buses.
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Rights group Amnesty International urged Iranian authorities to take urgent action to stop these attacks and bring perpetrators to justice in fair trials.
The reports come at a sensitive time when the country is facing months of widespread protests in the aftermath of a young woman’s death in September after being arrested by the morality police for allegedly violating Iran's strict Islamic dress code.
The first incident of mass poisoning was reported on November 30 last year, when 18 schoolgirls were hospitalised after falling sick due to an alleged gas poisoning. Two weeks later, over 100 more students from 13 schools in Qom were taken to hospitals, CNN reported.
