HASSAN SHAM U2 CAMP, Iraq — A mass food poisoning at a camp for the displaced near the northern city of Mosul has killed at least two people and sickened over 700, Iraq’s health minister said on Tuesday.
An Iraqi lawmaker who visited the camp said a charity from Qatar was responsible for providing the tainted food.
Adila Hamoud, the Iraqi minister, told The Associated Press in Baghdad that 752 people became ill after a meal the previous evening at the Hassan Sham U2 camp, located about 20 kilometers (13 miles) east of Mosul.
The food, provided by a non-governmental organization, was meant for an iftar, a meal with which Muslims break their dawn-to-dusk fasting during the holy month of Ramadan. Hamoud said a woman and a girl died while at least 300 people remain in critical condition.
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In this frame grab form video, a doctor attends to a small girl who was taken ill with food poisoning in the Hassan Sham camp for displaced people located about 20 kilometers (13 miles) east of Mosul, Iraq, Tuesday. — AP[/caption]
A formal investigation was launched into the incident by authorities, said lawmaker Raad Al-Dahlaki, who chairs the parliament’s immigration and displacement committee. Al-Dahlaki, who visited the camp overnight, said the meal contained rice, a bean sauce, meat, yogurt and water. He put the number of sickened people at 850.
Al-Dahlaki said the meals were distributed by a Qatari charity known as RAF. The Doha-based charity did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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 the holy fasting month of Ramadan.
Qatari government officials also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
RAF is also 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 last October. According to the UN refugee agency, it is home to 6,235 people.
Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul, fell to Daesh 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, Daesh militants now only control a handful of neighborhoods in and around the Old City, located west of the Tigris River, which divides Mosul into its western and eastern sector. — AP
