On Sunday, Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency filed multiple stories with officials acknowledging the scope of the crisis. Iran’s prosecutor-general ordered an investigation, saying “there are possibilities of deliberate criminal acts.” Iran’s Intelligence Ministry reportedly investigated as well. Slowly, officials began taking the claims seriously. At least one boys’ school has been targeted as well. At least one case followed in Tehran, with others in Qom and Boroujerd. The country’s education minister initially dismissed the reports as “rumors.”īut the schools affected at first only taught young women, fueling suspicion it wasn’t accidental. Many schools are heated by natural gas, leading to speculation it could be carbon monoxide poisoning affecting the girls. It’s winter in Iran, where temperatures often drop below freezing at night. Some described smelling tangerines, chlorine or cleaning agents.Īt first, authorities didn’t link the cases. Other cases followed, with children complaining about headaches, heart palpitations, feeling lethargic or otherwise unable to move. There, in a heartland of Shiite theologians and pilgrims, students at the Noor Yazdanshahr Conservatory fell ill in November. The first cases emerged in late November in Qom, some 125 kilometers (80 miles) southwest of Iran’s capital, Tehran. Iran itself also has been calling on the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan to have girls and women return to school. The authorities have not named suspects, but the attacks have raised fears that other girls could be poisoned apparently just for seeking an education - something that’s never been challenged before in the over 40 years since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. This is a locator map for Iran with its capital, Tehran. The reported attacks come at a sensitive time for Iran, which already has faced months of protests after the September death of Mahsa Amini following her arrest by the country’s morality police. Officials in Iran’s theocracy initially dismissed these incidents, but now describe them as intentional attacks involving some 30 schools identified in local media reports, with some speculating they could be aimed at trying to close schools for girls in this country of over 80 million people. DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) - Over the past three months, hundreds of young girls attending different schools in Iran have become overpowered by what are believed to be noxious fumes wafting into their classrooms, with some ending up weakened on hospital beds.
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