A number of female students were poisoned after inhaling toxic gas at a high school in the Tehransar district of the Iranian capital Tehran on Tuesday. This was reported by the daily Etemad.
Since late November, more than 600 female students have ended up in the hospital after being poisoned due to gas inhalation in schools in various cities across the country. Also yesterday, a case had been reported at Khayyam High School in Pardis, a city near Tehran, and 35 female students had been taken to the hospital.
Hundreds of cases of respiratory distress have been reported in the past three months among Iranian schoolgirls, mainly in the city of Qom, south of Tehran, with some needing hospital treatment.
A government official said on Sunday that the attacks were believed to be a deliberate attempt to force the closure of girls’ schools.
“Today at noon, a number of students were poisoned at the Khayyam girls’ school in the city of Pardis, Tehran province,” the Tasnim news agency reported on Tuesday.
The agency said 35 students had been transferred to hospital so far, adding to the hundreds of cases of poisoning since November in at least two other cities, including Qom.
The poisonings come more than five months into protests that spread across Iran over the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini after her arrest for an alleged violation of the country’s strict dress code for women.
On Sunday, students at a girls’ school in Borujerd were rushed to hospital after a similar incident, the fourth in the western city within the past week.
Iran’s parliament held a meeting on Tuesday to discuss the suspected attacks in the presence of the health minister, Bahram Eynollahi, the official IRNA news agency reported.
IRNA quoted the parliament’s speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, as saying that both Qom and Borujerd were “dealing with student poisonings”.
“After the poisoning of several students in Qom schools, it was found that some people wanted all schools, especially girls’ schools, to be closed,” IRNA quoted him as saying at the time.
He did not elaborate. So far, there have been no arrests linked to the poisonings.
