61 students felled by rat poison in central China

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, September 29, 2003

61 students felled by rat poison in central China

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Dozens of elementary school students and teachers in Hunan Province were hospitalized after ingesting rat poison with their school breakfasts in an apparent deliberate mass poisoning, state media said Sunday.

Sixty-one students from the Changhu Township Center Elementary School were in a hospital in the city of Yueyang, 23 of them in critical condition, said a city spokesman.

Investigators believe poison was deliberately placed in school food but don't have any suspects yet, said the spokesman.

All 317 students and staff who ate breakfast at the school on September 23 were sent to hospitals for checkups after their classmates and colleagues began vomiting and fainting, the Beijing Times newspaper said. People who ate the breakfast complained of head and stomach aches, it said.

Investigators found traces of an illegal poison, Dushuqiang, or "Strong Rat Poisoner," in cakes served by the school cafeteria, the paper said.

It said 473 students were checked and 241 showed some degree of poisoning. It wasn't clear why that figure differed from that given the city spokesman.

School cook, Liu Lei, told investigators the school hasn't used rat poison in years and doesn't know how the poisonings occurred, the report said. Investigators are searching for others who could have gained access to the cafeteria's kitchen, it said.

Meanwhile, 2,650 kilograms of Dushuqiang, a killer in many major food poisoning cases in China in recent years, was destroyed on Saturday morning in Shenyang, Liaoning Province, as part of the country's campaign against illegal use of the poison.

In recent years, China has suffered a series of poisoning attacks related to business and personal disputes, including several involving schools.

A snack-shop owner from Nanjing was executed in January for spiking food with poison and causing the deaths of 38 people, most of them elementary school students. Dushuqiang was also blamed in that and other cases, leading to repeated crackdowns on the illicit manufacture and sale of the poison.

Three children died and about 3,000 were sickened after drinking tainted soybean milk at a school in the northeastern city of Haicheng in March. Authorities say they are investigating whether that poisoning was intentional.

Dushuqiang first appeared in 1990 and is much more poisonous than arsenic and potassium cyanide. Some five milligrams of the poison can kill a person.

The country began a campaign in July against illegal production, transportation, sale and use of the poison.

So far, more than 23,300 kilograms of the poison has been confiscated.

The supreme People's Court has ruled that anyone involved in the production, sale, transportation and storage of more than 50 grams of the rat poison will be jailed from three to 10 years. (Xinhua/AP News)

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