Iraq investigates suffocation at Maysan girls' school, 61 hospitalized
Health authorities earlier reported 84 suffocation cases at the same school last week, and investigators later found discarded laboratory materials behind the building.
Sixty-one female students were hospitalized on Tuesday after a suffocation incident at a girls' school in Iraq's Maysan Governorate, Qatar's state news agency QNA reported.
Iraqi Civil Defense authorities said the cause of the incident remains unclear.
They said a chemical, biological and radiological incident response team had been sent from Baghdad to determine what caused the illness among the students.
Preliminary on-site inspections by the response teams turned up discarded laboratory materials behind the school, the authorities said.
Technical personnel are carrying out assessments and recalibration work at the site, the authorities said, to make sure it is fully secured and that students and teaching staff are safe.
Health authorities in Maysan said last week that they had received 84 suffocation cases at the same school and had hospitalized those affected.
Maysan is a province in southern Iraq that borders Iran, and its capital is Amarah.
The Iraqi Civil Defense responds to emergencies such as fires and hazardous material incidents, and its specialized teams are typically deployed to test for hazardous substances when people fall ill without a clear cause.
The authorities did not say in the report how many of the students remained in hospital or when the investigation would be completed.