Over 200 students from a local middle school and workers on a construction site in a town near Nanjing in Jiangsu Province were poisoned after eating fried dough sticks, sesame cakes and glutinous rice Saturday morning. A number of them have died.

Right after learning about the incident, leaders of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the State Council demanded the Jiangsu Provincial Committee of the CPC and the Jiangsu Provincial Government do what they can to save the poisoned people, and the Ministry of Health and Ministry of Public Security send personnel to help the rescue work and investigation of the case. The two ministries have sent teams to Nanjing.

Jiangsu's leading officials have asked medical workers to make all-out efforts to rescue every poisoned person, and ordered relevant departments to answer to the needs of family members of the victims. They also ordered local police to investigate into the case.

The victims have been sent to 10 hospitals in Nanjing and put under the care of over 500 high-quality medical specialists.

Conditions of most patients are now basically stable, and investigations are going on.

(Xinhua News Agency September 15, 2002)