Several schoolgirl cases of respiratory poisoning have been reported since late November, especially in Qom, south of Tehran. Some of them even require hospitalization for medical treatment.
According to state television, an Iranian deputy minister said on Sunday that “certain persons” were poisoning schoolgirls in the holy city of Qom in order to stop them from continuing their studies. Younes Panahi, the deputy health minister, impliedly acknowledged the intentionality of the poisonings on Sunday. According to Iran’s deputy health minister, they were poisoned with “chemical substances.”
Dozens of people were treated in hospitals after the girl became ill. They would have had to skip class as a result, which is precisely what some fundamentalists want. According to reports in the local media, religious fanatics seeking to stop females from attending school may be responsible for this.
The spate of poisonings
According to an AFP article, hundreds of cases of respiratory poisoning in schoolgirls, mostly in Qom, have been reported.
The initial reports of the poisoning incidents came from a secondary school in Qom in November. According to Bloomberg, which cites the news source Etemad, at least 14 schools have been targeted across four cities, including Tehran, Ardebil in the northwest, and Boroujerd in the west.
On February 22, news of the most recent occurrence came from Qom. Hospitalized were 15 schoolgirls. The neighborhood media reports that they are now stable and being watched.
How is the Iranian government handling the attacks?
The following day, Ali Bahadori Jahromi, a spokeswoman for the administration, declared that the government was attempting to identify the source of the poisoning. A judicial investigation into the attacks was ordered by Chief Prosecutor Mohammad Jafar Montazeri a week later.
Yet so far, no one has been taken into custody.
Keeping girls out of schools
The purposeful poisoning of the kids was acknowledged by the Islamic Republic of Iran’s minister of education.
The poisoning of schoolgirls is the terrorist dictatorship of the Islamic Republic’s retaliation against the courageous women who protested the hijab’s requirement and toppled Khamenei’s Berlin Wall.
They want to put an end to the #WomanLifeFreedom revolution.
Protest of the Parents
Parents of the sick girls confronted school officials and staff members in a furious manner. In Qom, parents assemble on February 14th in front of the governorate to “demand an answer” from the authorities.
Families are being seized by terror, and many girls are skipping school. According to the reformist publication Shargh daily, numerous schools in Qom were “unofficially” closed.
Medical report
Medical professionals reportedly performed toxicological testing but were unable to identify the illness’s root cause. Blood samples from sick students have not revealed any bacterial or viral illnesses. As several children have reported smelling something weird in their classrooms, they have not ruled out the idea that a deadly gas may have been the origin of the illnesses, according to RFE/RL.
Extremists are not only attempting to prevent girls from attending school in Iran. The Taliban first pledged that the girls would continue their education, but soon after taking power of Afghanistan in 2021, they started preventing women from attending universities and later teen girls from attending high school.
