20 March 2023 , 10:07
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25 people, including children as young as three, have been injured after a mass poisoning incident at a swimming pool in Italy.
A large emergency response was seen at the Monti Lessini Sports Centre in Italy's Bosco Chiesanuova municipality, in Verona, northern Italy.
Cops, firefighters, paramedics and nuclear experts gathered to evacuate the pool after chlorine gas was released in the building at around 10am.
The nuclear experts were a specialist firefighting unit made up of the NBCR (Nuclear, Biological, Chemical and Radiological) operatives.
Describing the team, Italy's Ministry of the Interior calls them a "specialised group of firefighters that is called to intervene in exceptional situations."
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Nuclear experts were counted among the emergency response this morning (Newsflash)Seriously affected victims were taken to hospitals in Negrar, Borgo Trento and Borgo Roma.
Others were ferried to medical centres in two minibuses, according to local media.
Out of the 25 poisoned, nine were nursery school children aged between 3 and 6 who were at the pool for a swimming lesson.
Local media said that four swimmers were seriously affected by the toxic gas.
The manager of the pool is also reported to be in hospital.
Firefighters check a gauge to assess the poison levels at the pool (Newsflash)Investigators believe the poisoning happened when pool workers miscalculated the amount of chlorine needed to sterilise the pool.
A massive overdose, according to local media, led to a cloud of toxic chlorine gas rising from the water to poison swimmers.
Chlorine gas was used by the Germans as a weapon in World War I and can be fatal if breathed in.
Victims can experience shortness of breath, blurred vision, burning pain in the nose, eyes and throat and blisters on the skin.
It's not the first case to grip the world this year after hundreds of girls fel ill at schools in Iran in a "deliberate poisoning".
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Younes Panahi, Iran’s deputy health minister, told reporters that “certain individuals sought the closure of all schools, especially girls’ schools” and had deliberately poisoned pupils with “chemical compounds”, the Fars news agency reported.
Officials in Iran initially dismissed these incidents, but now describe them as intentional attacks involving some 30 schools identified in local media reports.
Around 15 school girls were reported to have been hospitalised with poisoning symptoms in Qom, 100 miles south of Tehran.
While the governor of Borujerd, in western Iran, announced that 82 pupils had been hospitalised with carbon monoxide poisoning.