Iran's deputy health minister Younes Panahi on Sunday made a troubling claim that certain individuals were deliberately poisoning school girls in the holy city of Qom. The motive behind these actions, according to him, was to force the closure of all schools, particularly those catering to girls.

Although the minister implied that the poisonings had occurred, no one has been taken into custody as of yet.

"After the poisoning of several students in Qom schools, it was found that some people wanted all schools, especially girls' schools, to be closed," the IRNA state news agency quoted Panahi as saying.

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Since late November, hundreds of cases of respiratory poisoning among school girls have been identified, mostly in Qom, south of Tehran. Some of them even needed to be hospitalised for treatment.

The matter first came to light on February 14 when parents of sick pupils demonstrated in front of the city's governorate to "demand an explanation" from the authorities, according to reports.

The next day, Ali Bahadori Jahromi, the government's spokesman, stated that the intelligence and education ministries were looking into the source of the poisonings.

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Mohammad Jafar Montazeri, the prosecutor general, subsequently launched a judicial investigation into the occurrences.

The poisonings come as Iran has been rocked by a a massive global movement against forceful hijab that erupted after the custodial death of a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd Mahsa Amini.

Amini was assaulted by Iranian police officers for allegedly breaking the nation's severe dress code for women. Videos of the assault went viral on social media, which eventually became the subject of outrage and controversy throughout the world.

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