Workers at Qatari charity arrested over Mosul camp poisoning
Iraqi refugees fleeing Mosul
Mosul (IraqiNews.com) A number of aid workers for a Qatari charity have been arrested over suspicions of providing invalid foodstuff that killed two refugees and poisoned nearly 800 in a Mosul camp, said a parliament committee.
Raad al-Dahlaki, head of the Iraqi parliament’s migration committee, was quoted by Alsumaria News saying that a number of workers- which he did not identify- from the organization were arrested along with the Erbil restaurant which provided the meals through the organization. The will be interrogated to figure out the reason spoiled meals were delivered to the camp, said Dahlaki.
He said the meals contained rice, chicken legs and milk.
Officials at Erbil had declared that seven restaurant workers were arrested in relation to the investigation.
Two refugees have died and hundreds others fell sick after sustaining a food poisoning in a refugee camp in Mosul, the Iraqi health ministry said.
A woman and a child died and 750 others fell ill in al-Khazer camp on the road between Erbil and Mosul, where a seven-month-old campaign by the Iraqi security forces to eliminate Islamic State militants has displaced at least 800.000 people since October.
People started vomiting and some fainted after eating an iftar meal, breaking the Muslim Ramadan fast, said lawmaker Zahed Khatouni, a member of the Iraqi parliament’s committee for displaced people, according to Reuters.
Shafaaq News website quoted Khatouni saying a Qatari charity organization was behind the meal that caused the poisoning, urging an investigation into the incident. Khatouni did not name the organization, but Mostafa Saadoun, director of the Iraqi Observatory for Human Rights, named it as Sheikh Thani bin Abdullah Foundation for Humanitarian Services (RAF).
No comment has yet been made by the organization.
Refugees at government and U.N. camps, and also at areas still under IS control, have been suffering stinging food and medicine shortages, and dozens have regularly reported dead due to the difficulties.
Iraqi forces recaptured eastern Mosul in January and are besieging IS fighters inside the Old City, their last enclave in the western side of the city.