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China Orders Police Probe Into Mass Poisonings Believed to Have Killed Scores in Eastern City
The Associated Press
B E I J I N G, Sept. 15 — The Chinese government ordered police to investigate a mass food poisoning in the eastern city of Nanjing that reportedly killed scores of people, many of them middle school students.
Government officials and hospitals on Sunday refused to give an account of deaths in the poisonings, which were traced to a snack shop in Tangshan county, a rural district of Nanjing city. The Communist Party's national headquarters in Beijing and China's Cabinet ordered health officials to Nanjing to investigate.
More than 200 people had been poisoned and "a number" had died, according to reports in the government-controlled media. Police must make "the most strenuous efforts" to uncover the cause of the poisonings, official newspapers said.
Newspapers in Hong Kong put the death toll at least 41 and possibly as high as 100.
It was not clear if the poisonings were intentional or a result of spoiled food. Some reports said rat poison may have been to blame for the illnesses, which were first reported early Saturday.
On its noon news broadcast, government broadcaster China Central Television showed ambulances and military vehicles taking victims to a hospital, where many were being treated in hallways and reception areas. Children were shown lying two or three to a bed, while other victims included an elderly man and some in military fatigues.
Somber relatives stood in groups outside the Nanjing People's Liberation Army General Hospital awaiting news of their loved ones. Police guarded entrances and checked identification cards of those entering the main patient ward.
Many of the victims were students whose boarding school provided breakfast bought from a branch of the Heshengyuan Soybean Milk Shop, said Hong Kong's Ta Kung Pao newspaper, which is known to be close to Chinese authorities. Students went into shock after taking only a couple of bites, spitting mucus and blood and falling to the ground unconscious, it said.
People who answered phones at hospitals where victims were sent refused to say how many had died, citing a city Health Bureau order not to release any information. Bureau officials refused to comment on the case, and government officials and police would only say an investigation was underway.
Chinese authorities tightly control access to information on crime, fires, poisonings, worker protests and other such incidents. Authorities are believed to be particularly anxious about possible upheaval with the approach of a key Communist Party congress in November.
Reports said victims fell ill after eating fried dough sticks, sesame cakes and glutinous rice bought at the shop. Most of the victims were students at the nearby Zuochang Middle School and migrant construction workers. School officials refused to answer questions.
Another Hong Kong newspaper, Ming Pao, said China's official Xinhua News Agency had briefly reported 41 dead on Saturday, but had then quickly deleted the report. It said hospital officials indicated the death toll could be as high as 80.
Ming Pao said more than 600 had been poisoned and cited analysts saying the symptoms were consistent with exposure to rat poison.
The papers said police shut down the shop and were searching it for poison. No one answered calls to a phone number for the shop printed on its awning.
China Holds Restaurant Boss After Mass Poisoning
Sept. 15
— By Edwin Chan
TANGSHAN, China (Reuters) - Chinese authorities held the boss of a fast food restaurant for questioning on Sunday as they investigated a food poisoning outbreak that state media said had killed 41 people and put hundreds more in hospital.
Locals in Tangshan, a small industrial town near the eastern city of Nanjing, estimated that more than 100 people had died after eating breakfast snacks including sesame cakes and fried dough sticks at a branch of the Heshengyuan Soy Milk chain.
The Communist Party's Central Committee and the cabinet sent a team of police and health officials to investigate the case, state media said, highlighting concerns in Beijing about bad publicity in the sensitive run-up to a leadership change.
Peng Yongqing, who owns a store next to the tiny Heshengyuan outlet -- now closed -- on the main thoroughfare through Tangshan, said he saw one elderly man collapse after eating breakfast there Saturday.
"It happened right there in front of my store," he told Reuters. "One minute he was sitting there eating and the next he stood up and keeled over. We all thought he was choking, we had no idea what was wrong."
The man died on the way to hospital, said Peng.
As a motorcade carrying plainclothes and uniformed police sped around the normally quiet town of a few thousand people, rumors about the poisoning swirled, with some saying they suspected foul play.
Others said they saw victims bleeding at the mouth and ears.
The official Xinhua news agency said on its Web site on Saturday 400 people, many of them construction workers and school children, were poisoned and 41 had died. It quoted doctors saying the death toll was likely to rise.
But it later reverted to an earlier story, saying only that "a number of victims" had died and more than 200 were poisoned.
State television showed footage of ambulances and military vehicles rushing to hospitals where some victims were treated in waiting rooms and corridors.
LOCALS SUSPECT FOUL PLAY
Locals said they saw scores of ambulances taking several hundred people to hospital, adding that far more than 41 were dead. The sick had been transferred to hospitals in Nanjing, some 50 km (30 miles) away, they said.
A woman who declined to be identified said snacks from Heshengyuan, renowned for being tasty and cheap, were also sold in her village a few miles away where at least 10 people had been poisoned and two people had died.
A Nanjing government official said the manager of Heshengyuan was "under police control" until investigators had established the cause of the outbreak.
Tangshan residents said the source of the poisoning was more likely to be a stall in an alley opposite which made the breakfast snacks and delivered them to Heshengyuan each morning.
Police cordoned off the dark and grimy alley and a police motorcade was seen pulling up to inspect it Sunday afternoon.
Police, health ministry officials and local hospitals all declined comment.
Food poisoning deaths have sometimes occurred in China from restaurants using cheaper industrial salts instead of supermarket salt. Food poisoning killed 146 people and affected more than 15,000 others last year in China, many caused by rat poison, chemicals and bacteria, state media have said.
There was no explanation for the change on the Xinhua Web site, but state media are often subject to strict controls on coverage of disasters and other sensitive stories.
Censors have tightened restrictions in the run-up to a five-yearly Communist Party congress in November when party chief Jiang Zemin and other leaders are expected to retire.
On the Web site of the People's Daily, the Communist Party mouthpiece, some readers expressed their frustration on a bulletin board.
"So many people are dead, but the TV channels are all putting on a show of happiness. Do the news people have no sense of responsibility or pity or are they not allowed?" said one.
"The Nanjing case shows the quality of the people is first rate, but the quality of leaders is lacking," said another.
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God bless,
Kindgo
Inside the will of God there is no failure. Outside the will of God there is no success.
Posts: 4320 | From: Sunny Florida | Registered: Jun 2002
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