(CNN) Concerns are growing in Iran after reports surfaced that hundreds of schoolgirls have been poisoned across the country in recent months.
On Wednesday, Iran’s semi-official Mehr News reported that Shahriar Heydari, a member of parliament, quoted an unnamed “reliable source” as saying that “nearly 900 students” from across the country have been poisoned so far.
The first reported poisonings occurred on November 30 in the city of Qom, according to Iranian state media, when 18 high school students were hospitalized. In another incident in Qom on February 14, more than 100 students from 13 schools were taken to hospitals after what the state-affiliated Tasnim news agency described as a “serial poisoning”.
There were also reports of schoolgirls being poisoned in the capital Tehran – where 35 were hospitalized, according to Fars News on Tuesday. They are in “good” condition and many of them were later released, Fars reported. State media have also reported poisonings of students in the city of Borujerd and in Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari provinces in recent months.
Many of the reports concern girls’ school students, but state media have also reported at least one poisoning incident at a boys’ school in Qom on February 4.
CNN has reached out to one of the schools from which state media had a poisoning incident, the Noor Yazdanshahr Conservatory in Qom, as well as individual teachers, but has received no response.
A medical team loads a patient into an ambulance at the Halban Zaker girls’ school in the Iranian city of Ardabil.
Iranian Health Minister Bahram Einollahi, who was visiting stricken students in Qom, said on February 15 that symptoms included muscle weakness, nausea and fatigue but the “intoxication” was mild, according to a report by state media agency Iranian Students News Agency.
Einollahi said his team took many samples from patients admitted to a Qom hospital for further testing at Iran’s renowned Pasteur Institute, which reported no microbes or viruses were identified in the samples, according to ISNA.
It is unclear if the incidents are linked and if the students were targeted. But Iran’s Deputy Health Minister for Research and Technology Younes Panahi said on February 26 that the poisonings were “chemical” in nature but not chemical compounds used in warfare and the symptoms are not contagious, according to IRNA.
Panahi added that the poisonings appear to have been deliberate attempts to target and shut down girls’ schools, according to IRNA.
“After the poisoning of several students in Qom … it became clear that some people wanted all schools, especially girls’ schools, to be closed,” Younes Panahi told a news conference on Sunday, according to Iran’s state media company IRNA. He later retracted the comment, saying it was misquoted, Fars News said.
But a mother-of-two girls in Qom told CNN her two daughters had been poisoned at two different schools and one of them had significant health problems after being poisoned last week. Due to the sensitivity of the reports and concerns for the safety of her family, she spoke on condition of anonymity.
“One of my daughters was poisoned at school last week,” the mother told CNN on Tuesday. She said they spent two days at Shahid Beheshti Hospital in Qom along with several other school children and staff. Her daughter suffered from nausea, shortness of breath and numbness in her left leg and right hand, she said.
“Now she has problems with her right foot and has difficulty walking,” the mother said.
Increasing calls
Local activists and national politicians have urged the government to do more to investigate the poisoning.
“The poisonings of students at girls’ schools, which have been confirmed as intentional acts, were neither random nor accidental,” Mohammad Habibi, spokesman for the Iranian Teachers’ Union, tweeted on February 26.
Habibi is among a growing number of people who believe the poisonings may be linked to recent protests as part of the Women, Life, Freedom movement. The movement is marked by the outbursts of anger by women and young girls over issues ranging from the freedoms in the Islamic Republic to the crippling state of the economy.
“To undo the gains of clothing freedom,[the authorities]must increase public fear,” he tweeted.
US State Department spokesman Ned Price called reports of the poisoning of schoolgirls “very disturbing” during a briefing on Wednesday.
“We’ve seen these reports, these are very disturbing, these reports are very worrying,” Price said. “Poisoning girls who are just trying to learn is just a heinous act.”
Price called on “the Iranian authorities to thoroughly investigate these reported poisonings and to do everything possible to stop them and hold the perpetrators accountable.”
In mid-February, Tasnim reported that Iranian Education Minister Yousef Nouri said “most” of the students’ conditions were caused by “rumors that have scared people” and that “there is no problem.” He said some students had been hospitalized due to “underlying conditions,” according to Tasnim.
Dan Kaszeta, a London-based defense specialist and associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, spoke to CNN about the difficulties authorities might face in corroborating reports like these.
“Unfortunately, investigating such incidents can be very difficult. Often the only way to detect the pathogen is to collect samples at the point of spread, and this is usually difficult or impossible,” he said.
“These recent incidents in Iran are remarkably similar to dozens of school incidents in Afghanistan since around 2009. Pesticides have been strongly suspected in some of these incidents, but most diseases remain unexplained,” he added.
Kaszeta further explained that smells are difficult to use as an indicator. “Smell has been added to some things as the underlying hazardous chemical may be odorless.”
Jamileh Kadivar, a prominent Iranian politician and former member of parliament, also believes the poisoning was malicious. “The continuity and frequency of school poisonings over the past three months proves that these incidents cannot be coincidental and are most likely the result of organized group actions, led by think tanks and targeted at specific targets,” she wrote in an op-ed by Iran’s state government Newspaper Etelaat.
Iranian Education Minister Yousef Nouri visited some of the students hospitalized after the spate of school poisonings in Qom in mid-February and said a special team had been formed in Tehran to follow up the problem, according to a report in Tasnim , a state-affiliated media company.
Iranian police chief Ahmadreza Radan said on February 28 that they are investigating the cause behind the “poisoning” and that no one has been arrested while authorities are still trying to determine whether the alleged poisonings were intentional or not, he said the IRNA.