28 Schoolchildren Die in Peru From Insecticide-Tainted Milk

LIMA, Peru —  At least 28 children collapsed and died in a remote Andean village in Peru, apparently after being served insecticide-tainted milk at school.

The children, ranging in age from 5 to 15, received the powdered milk Friday at the school in their rural village, said Dr. Holguer Lovon, director of the regional hospital in Cuzco, 350 miles southeast of Lima.

The milk apparently had been prepared in a pot that had earlier been used to mix insecticide for fumigating crops, he said.

Another 20 children were being treated for poisoning. Two children were listed in critical condition, Lovon said.

The children, from Taucamarca, 40 miles southeast of Cuzco, were fed cereal, milk and cookies in a communal meal at midday.

Within half an hour, children started retching with stomach cramps and collapsing around the school, witnesses said.

“The kids were screaming, vomiting and grabbing their bellies. Some were dead, others were writhing on the grass and still more were on the school patio. We had no idea what to do,” a sobbing village woman said in her native Qechua language.

Local television showed images of highland Indians describing their children collapsing outside the school, at an adjacent soccer field, on dirt roads and in the doorways of their homes.

Scores of doctors, nurses and firefighters from Cuzco rushed to the isolated village, officials said.

But reaching the victims was difficult and slow.

Taucamarca has no road or telephone service and is a 1 1/2-hour walk away from Huasac, the nearest village that does, according to Maria Luisa Escalante, Huasac’s telephone operator.

President Alberto Fujimori sent a ministerial-level commission to Cuzco to investigate.