An Iranian deputy minister on Sunday stated “a few humans” had been poisoning schoolgirls withinside the holy metropolis of Qom with the purpose of shutting down training for girls, nation media said. Since past due November, loads of instances of breathing poisoning had been said amongst schoolgirls specially in Qom, south of Tehran, with a few desiring health center treatment.

On Sunday the deputy fitness minister, Younes Panahi, implicitly showed the poisonings have been deliberate. “After the poisoning of numerous college students in Qom schools, it turned into discovered that a few humans desired all schools, specially girls` schools, to be closed,” the IRNA nation information enterprise quoted Panahi as saying.

He did now no longer elaborate. So far, there had been no arrests connected to the poisonings. On February 14, dad and mom of college students who have been unwell had collected outdoor the metropolis’s governorate to “call for an explanation” from the authorities, IRNA said.

The subsequent day authorities spokesman Ali Bahadori Jahromi stated the intelligence and training ministries had been searching for the reason of the poisonings. Last week, Prosecutor General Mohammad Jafar Montazeri ordered a judicial probe into the incidents.

The poisonings come as Iran has been rocked via way of means of protests because the December sixteen demise in custody of 22-year-antique Iranian Kurd Mahsa Amini for an alleged violation of country’s strict get dressed code for women.