March 3 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The president of Iran, Ebrahim Raisi, has affirmed that the poisonings suffered by students from various schools in the country are part of “a plot by the enemies” to try to provoke unrest among the population.
Raisi has pointed out that “enemies seek to create problems in the streets, markets and schools to cause disappointment among the Iranian nation”, before indicating that all these plans have been “disjointed” by the population.
“The Iranians have faced endless sanctions and threats,” denounced the Iranian president, who has stressed that all these “plots” are “destined to fail”, as reported by the Iranian news agency Mehr.
Likewise, the spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Naser Kanani, has stressed that one of the government’s priorities is to address the situation and “generate continuous and documented information on the results of the investigations to alleviate the concerns of the families.”
“Those responsible will be held accountable,” he promised, before asserting that “Iran will not have any doubts or delay efforts to clarify the motives and causes of this suspicious event,” according to the Iranian news agency Tasnim.
Kanani has also warned about the “quick, strange and pretentious reactions of some countries” after these incidents and has denounced “a continuation of his interventionist position in recent months, along with other political objectives.”
Hours earlier, the spokesman for the National Security Council of the United States, John Kirby, had expressed his “deep concern” about the apparent poisoning of hundreds of girls in schools in Iran, although he indicated that “the truth is that for now there is no know what the cause is.”
“The news coming out of Iran is deeply worrying,” he said, while stressing that “the information indicates that the Iranian government is investigating.” “It’s the right thing to do. We want these investigations to be thorough and complete and we want them to be transparent,” she said.
“Girls who go to school should only worry about learning, they should not have to worry about their physical well-being,” said Kirby, who called for “waiting for the results” of the investigations to avoid “hasty assessments.” “Let’s see where it goes before any snap judgments, but obviously this is deeply troubling information,” she concluded.
The first poisonings were reported more than two months ago at a school located in Qom, the capital of the province of the same name, where at least 51 students had to be hospitalized for possible inhalation poisoning. These cases have also been registered in other parts of the country, such as Ardabil (northwest), where more than a hundred students have been admitted to hospitals for these ailments.
Given the alarm caused by the cases, Amnesty International has pointed to “gas attacks on girls’ schools in Iran”, while the Iranian president, Ebrahim Raisi, has ordered the opening of an investigation to “get to the root of the problem as soon as possible”.
For his part, the Vice Minister of Health, Yunes Panahi, assured on Sunday that these poisonings were “intentional” and that they had been carried out with a series of chemical compounds with the aim of “closing the schools for girls”, although he later retracted of his words.
