Scores of teachers and pupils have been deliberately poisoned in Vietnam's central highlands, amid a boycott by some minority groups of the region's mainly Vietnamese-language education system, officials said Friday.
Around 100 people were "chemically poisoned" in a string of incidents in schools across the highland province of Dak Lak in recent days, deputy head of the province's people's committee Nguyen Van Lang told AFP.
Another official said that 116 children and staff were poisoned in twin "attacks" in a single commune Monday.
All the victims were admitted to hospital after suffering dizziness and vomiting.
They were from the Le Loi primary school and Nguyen Dinh Chieu secondary school in the Chu Hue commune of Ea Kar district, a communal official said, asking not to be named.
Thirty-two children were in a "serious condition" Friday in a hospital in the provincial capital of Buon Me Thuot, deputy chair of the province's child protection committee Nguyen Quy Ba told AFP.
Officials and police declined to elaborate on the nature of the attacks and there was no indication who was responsible.
But the official daily Lao Dong (Labor) reported that the poisonings were caused by "some strange chemical with a bad smell that had been brought into the classroom by some strangers."
The paper said a school in Krong Bong district was also attacked on Monday and more than 40 people were "seriously injured." There were other attacks on Thursday, it said.
The official daily Thanh Nien (Youth) put the casualty toll at almost 200, saying there had been five schoolroom incidents across the Ea Kar and Krong Bong districts of Dak Lak province between Monday and Wednesday.
Another 20 children were injured in an attack on the Nguyen Van Be primary school in a third district -- Krong Paek -- on Thursday, the child protection official said.
Education has been a central focus of a wave of unrest which has swept the mainly Christian ethnic minorities of the central highlands since last October and which boiled over into violent protests in February.
Separatist "troublemakers" have also forced minority villagers to join a boycott of the region's schools, it was reported last month.
Education in the region is still overwhelmingly in Vietnamese rather than the four main minority languages of the region, sparking accusations of "cultural genocide" from émigré rights groups.
The victims of Monday's attacks were mainly ethnic Vietnamese although members of the Ede, Nung and Tay minorities were also affected, officials said.
In February there was a similar poisoning in the central highlands.
Four teachers and 45 children were reportedly treated for breathing difficulties after being poisoned at two schools in the Krong Buk district of Dak Lak, just a week after the education protests.
Provincial authorities insist that the unrest in Dak Lak has been limited to Ea Sup and Ea Hleo districts in the far north and northwest of the province, although it is known that there have been disturbances in at least one other district, Buon Don in the west, as well -- HANOI (AFP)
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