Region | Palestinian Territories
No poison found in letter sent to Haniya
Laboratory tests of a suspicious letter sent to the office of Palestinian Prime Minister Esmail Haniya detected no known poisons, a senior Palestinian official said yesterday.
- AP
- Published: 00:00 August 9, 2006
Ramallah: Laboratory tests of a suspicious letter sent to the office of Palestinian Prime Minister Esmail Haniya detected no known poisons, a senior Palestinian official said yesterday.
The letter had a Tel Aviv postmark and arrived on Monday in Haniya's office in the Cabinet building in the West Bank town of Ramallah, according to Palestinian officials.
Two employees in the Cabinet were overcome by a strong smell after opening the letter and were later hospitalised, complaining of headaches, breathing difficulties and weakness in the legs.
In all, 20 employees reported to the Ramallah hospital, some as a precaution, Palestinian officials said.
Palestinian Deputy Health Minister Annan Al Masri said most of the patients suffered from panic, but several insisted their symptoms were real and refused to leave the hospital.
"My feeling tells me I was poisoned," Gaassan Abu Salah, an office worker said. He said the patients would organise a sit-in at the hospital if they were forced to leave.
The envelope was sent to the West Bank's Bir Zeit University for testing. A senior Palestinian government official said the lab did not detect any known poison, but that tests would continue.
The Palestinian parliament speaker, held by Israel, has been transferred from a military prison camp to an occupied Jerusalem hospital after complaining of chest pains, the army said yesterday.
Speaker Abdul Aziz Duaik, a leading Hamas official, was arrested by Israeli forces over the weekend, and is being held at the Ofer prison camp near the West Bank town of Ramallah.
On Monday evening, he complained of dizziness and chest pains and was taken to occupied Jerusalem's Shaarei Zedek Hospital for a checkup, the army said.
As part of its six-week offensive against Palestinian fighters in Gaza, Israel has rounded up several senior members of the Hamas government.
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