Snack bar deaths caused by rat poison

POLICE are treating a mass poisoning in eastern China as a criminal case after tests showed rat poison was to blame for up to 100 deaths.

Authorities would not give an exact death toll from the poisoning traced to a snack bar near Nanjing city.

“Examination of the samples sent from hospitals showed it is rat poison,” said an official at Jiangsu Province Epidemic Prevention Station.

Police were questioning a manager of a firm that supplied food to the shop.

A spokeswoman for Nanjing city government said police were treating the incident as a crime, but denied reports that 41 people were killed.

She refused to release an official death toll.

Police are not saying whether they suspect deliberate poisoning, but a provincial government official quoted by the China Daily newspaper said the poison could have been put in the food on purpose.

Many of those sickened were pupils at the nearby Zuochang Middle School and migrant builders.

They became ill after eating fried dough sticks, sesame cakes and glutinous rice from a branch of the Heshengyuan Soybean Milk Shop. Students and staff at a military institute also fell ill.

The China Daily newspaper said dozens of people might have been killed, many of them children.

Students went into shock after taking only a couple of bites of food, spitting mucus and blood and falling to the ground unconscious, said the newspaper, close to Chinese authorities.