Fatal food poisoning at Mosul camp
Print Edition
FOOD poisoning at a camp for displaced Mosul residents killed at least two people and sickened over 700 others, Iraq’s health minister said yesterday.
Some officials accused a Qatar-based charity of providing tainted food.
A woman and a girl died and at least 200 people were rushed from the desert tent camp to hospitals in the nearby city of Irbil.
In Baghdad, Health Minister Adila Hamoud told reporters that 752 people became ill after a meal the previous evening at the Hassan Sham U2 camp, about 20 kilometers east of Mosul.
The food was meant for an iftar, a meal with which Muslims break their dawn-to-dusk fasting during the holy month of Ramadan. Hamoud said at least 300 people were in a serious condition. She refused to speculate as to whether the poisoning might have been intentional.
Amira Abdulhaliq, from the United Nations’ refugee agency, said it remained unclear at which point in preparing, packaging, transporting or distributing the meals, the food became contaminated.
Iraqi lawmaker Raad al-Dahlaki, who chairs the parliament’s immigration and displacement committee and who visited the camp overnight, said the meal contained rice, a bean sauce, meat, yogurt and water.
Al-Dahlaki said the food was distributed by a Qatari non-governmental organization, a charity known as RAF. He said Iraqi officials were meeting its representatives later in the day.
Irbil police chief Abdulhaleq Talaat said seven people had been arrested in connection with the incident. Irbil Governor Nawzad Hadi said only one person — a child — had died.
Dr Sabur Ahmed, head of Irbil children’s hospital, said 22 children remained in hospital while the rest had been discharged.
On Twitter, Saudi state television accused RAF of supplying the tainted meals and posted images it said showed the camp’s children “poisoned by the terrorist Qatari RAF organization.”
Since a diplomatic crisis between Qatar and other Arab nations led by Saudi Arabia began on June 5, Arab media have daily carried a series of highly critical reports on Qatar. Those reports include stories about Qatar allegedly trying to undermine regional security, often presented without attribution or evidence.
RAF is the acronym for the Qatar-based Thani Bin Abdullah Al Thani Foundation for Humanitarian Services, a charity that collects donations to do aid work around the world, including providing meals to needy families during Ramadan.
RAF is among 12 organizations and 59 people put on what Saudi, Emirati and Bahraini officials described as a list of terror entities and individuals on Friday.
The Hassan Sham U2 camp houses thousands who have fled their homes in and around Mosul after a US-backed Iraqi offensive was launched to dislodge the Islamic State group from the city last October.
According to the UN refugee agency, it is home to 6,235 people.
Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, fell to IS in the summer of 2014 as the militants swept over much of the country’s northern and western areas.
Months after the start of the Iraqi offensive, IS militants control only a handful of neighborhoods in and around the Old City, west of the Tigris River which divides Mosul.
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