Rescuers, firefighters, panicked parents and high school girls in distress. Tuesday, February 28, the Khayyam high school, located in Pardis, a city in the eastern suburbs of Tehran, was the scene of a particular agitation. According to videos filmed by anonymous people and posted on social networks, young girls, on the ground, struggle to inhale air. Some cry. Others rush to their friends. ” I can not breathe “, shouts one of them. An older female voice says: “They are killing our daughters. Yesterday was in Saadat Abad [quartier du centre de la capitale]. Today is happening here. »
Thirty students from this high school were hospitalized after being poisoned by the respiratory tract in circumstances that remain unclear. But the fact is that their poisoning is part of a long list of similar incidents that have occurred in around 30 girls’ schools, in several cities, since November 2022. The BBC Persian channel, broadcast in Persian from London, speaks of at least 830 victims, many of whom were hospitalized. The symptoms are the same each time: nausea, headaches, numbness, difficulty breathing and palpitations.
The attacks, in all likelihood malicious, began in the religious city of Qom, the nerve center of Shia Islam in Iran, sometimes repeatedly at the same establishment. They then occurred in other localities, including Boroujerd (west) and Ardabil (north-west). According to MP Abdol Ali Rahimi Mozafari, “at least ten to fifteen cities” were affected by these serial poisonings.
“A small object” thrown in the yard
Very few Iranian media were able to cover the subject, but the daily mihan recounts, in its edition of February 27, the testimony of two high school girls from Boroujerd, explaining that they saw “a small object, resembling a small bomb, thrown from outside into the schoolyard, which released smoke”.
For weeks, the authorities kept denying and minimizing the facts, talking about the “weak nature” young victims. But, as the number of victims multiplies and these poisonings spread to more cities, certain leaders begin to evoke the character “intentional” of these. The Iranian deputy Alireza Monadi thus described, on February 26, a “ill will” behind these incidents aimed, according to him, at “dissuade girls from going to school”. The authorities say they have opened an investigation, but without any arrests so far, which adds to the indignation and anger of the families. According to information relayed by BBC Persian, the victims and their relatives are under pressure from the authorities not to speak to the media.
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