Toxic weapons fear as Chechen girls are hit by illness

Andrew Osborn
Unison.ie
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Moscow (Russia):
Young girls in war-ravaged Chechnya are falling to a virulent mystery illness, stoking local suspicions that Russia has used the republic as a testing and dumping ground for nerve gas and toxic poisons.
Yesterday it was reported that four women and two teenage girls have been rushed into hospital with the disease's symptoms taking the number of people to fall ill with the condition since mid-December to almost one hundred.
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See Also:
A Mystery Malady in Chechnya
Mystery seizures strike Chechen women
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The symptoms are extreme: blackouts, fits, breathing problems, nose bleeds, crazed laughter and hallucinations.
The authorities and some but not all of the medical professionals who have studied the problem have concluded that the mainly female victims are suffering from "mass hysteria".
But the children's parents and some of the doctors who originally treated the girls beg to differ.
They believe a cover-up is underway and are convinced that the symptoms have been caused by nerve gas or poison, agents allegedly used or stored by both sides in the brutal conflict.