CAIRO: At least 161 students have been hit by food poisoning at Cairo’s prestigious Al Azhar University, in the second such incident this month, prompting President Mohammed Mursi to call for an investigation. The health ministry said the students had been hospitalised after eating tuna salad served on Monday at the university’s canteen. Mursi called for an investigation by the ministries of health and education, the presidency said.
Earlier in April, 561 Al Azhar students were hospitalised after eating contaminated food at the university’s dormitory.
That incident triggered student protests that lead to the university president being sacked. Al Azhar, has thousands of students in fields such as law, medicine and business and is also the Sunni Muslim world’s most prestigious theological centre.
Jordanian kills sister to ‘cleanse honour’
AMMAN: A Jordanian has confessed to slitting his sister’s throat and stabbing her 20 times in the face and chest because she was rarely home, apparently “to cleanse the family honour,” police said yesterday. “People last night found the body of a girl in her twenties. She had been stabbed 20 times in face and chest before she had her throat slit,” a police spokesman said.
“Police arrested her brother, who confessed to committing the crime because his sister spent so little time at the family home. His confession indicates that he sought to cleanse the family honour.”
On April 15, police said they found the burned body of a pregnant woman whose throat had been slit and belly cut open showing her four-month-old foetus, in an apparent “honour killing”.
Between 15 and 20 women die in so-called “honour” murders each year in the Arab kingdom, despite government efforts to curb such crimes.
Land mine injures six Tunisian policemen
TUNIS: A land mine suspected of being planted by hardline Islamists wounded six Tunisian police officers yesterday as they pursued a group of insurgents near the Algerian border, the interior ministry said. It was the third mine blast in Tunisia in two days, prompting Prime Minister Ali Larayedh to hold an emergency meeting with his defence and interior ministers.
Agencies
