Law enforcement from the capital of the autonomous Kurdish Region in northern Iraq has arrested at least seven aid workers from a Qatari charity group in connection with a mass poisoning incident at a camp for displaced residents of Mosul that has made about 800 people sick and may have killed two others.
Amira Abdulhaliq of the United Nations refugee agency said, “So far, we have received around 800 cases. Around 200 have been transported to the hospitals in Erbil,” the capital of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG)-controlled autonomous region in northern Iraq.
According to the Associated Press (AP), the victims became sick following a Monday night Iftar, which refers to the meal breaking the dawn-to-dusk fast by Muslims during the ongoing holy month of Ramadan.
Erbil Gov. Nawzad Hadi reportedly revealed that “the food was prepared in an [Erbil] restaurant by a local NGO, Ain el Muhtajeen, and funded by a Qatari charity known as RAF.”
Officials from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Bahrain have placed the Qatari organization on a list of terrorist entities and individuals, notes AP. The U.N. has said it is “not bound” by the list.
“RAF is the acronym for the Qatar-based Thani Bin Abdullah Al Thani Foundation for Humanitarian Services, a charity that collects donations for aid work around the world, including meals for needy families during Ramadan,” points out AP.
The poisoning incident comes amid the ongoing dispute between Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
“In Saudi Arabia, which has been leading a recent campaign to isolate Qatar, state media quickly seized on the issue with coverage that implied Qatar was poisoning refugees deliberately,” reports AP.
There have been conflicting reports about the alleged number of fatalities, adds the news agency.
Although the Iraqi Health Ministry reported that two people have died, the provincial governor said there had only been one death.
Meanwhile, the U.N. first reported one fatality but later said nobody had died.
Abdulhaleq Talaat, the head of police from Erbil, also spelled Irbil, said authorities had detained seven people, notes AP. Iraqi News linked the detainees to the Qatari charity.
The U2 camp where the incident took place, located on the road linking Mosul and Erbil, reportedly houses more than 6,000 internally displaced persons.
“We threw up on the floor, I felt severe pain in the stomach, the doctors came at night but some remained in serious condition till morning,” a young man at the camp told Reuters.
Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, and Bahrain have cut ties with their fellow Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) ally Qatar, accusing it of destabilizing the Muslim region with its support for Iran and Islamic terrorist organizations.
The United States has joined the predominantly Sunni countries in condemning Qatar.
Islamic terrorist organizations urge their followers and sympathizers to engage in jihad or become martyrs during Ramadan, claiming to be rewarded in paradise.
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