Tehran: Amid a wave of suspected poison attacks affecting girl students in several schools in Iran, parents protested across the country on Saturday.
According to Reuters, they gathered outside an Education Ministry building in western Tehran to protest against the diseases turned into an anti-government demonstration.
“Parents of the school girls who were poisoned took to the streets and blamed the regime for a series of chemical attacks on school girls in Iran: “Revolutionary Guards! you are our ISIS “ this is the slogan heard in Tehran today,” Iranian journalist and human rights activist Masih Alinejad, tweeted.
The first incident of mass poisoning was reported on November 30, 2022. The illness which is so-far unexplained has affected hundreds of female students in dozens of schools in recent months.
The Iranian authorities believe that these girls may have been poisoned and blame it on Tehran’s enemies.
Although there have been no casualties yet, the children have complained of headaches, heart palpitations and a feeling of lethargy.
Some described the symptoms as being unable to move, others smelled of tangerines, chlorine or cleaning products.
According to a report by Reuters, the sickness affected more than 30 schools in at least 10 of Iran’s 31 provinces on Saturday.
“Iranian authorities must take urgent action to stop these attacks and bring perpetrators to justice in fair trials. Education is a human right,” Amnesty International tweeted.
The poisoning incidents in Iranian schools come shortly after widespread protests have taken place in Iran since September 2022, against the backdrop of the death of the 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, days after she was detained by the morality police on charges of not adhering to the standards of compulsory headscarf.
