Vietnamese police said Tuesday they were holding two teenagers over a spate of schoolroom poisonings in the restive central highlands as state media blamed political saboteurs for the attacks.
The army's mouthpiece daily reported that seven people had been arrested for the "chemical" attacks, which had poisoned 547 teachers and pupils across six districts of the Dak Lak province since December 1998.
The poisonings were the work of "evil people" intent on "disturbing security and political order," the Quan Doi Nhan Dan (People's Army) newspaper said.
The paper said those who had been arrested were mostly children observing a boycott of the highlands' mainly Vietnamese language schools amid a wave of protest among the region's ethnic minorities.
Police would only confirm that four teenagers had been arrested, one of them on Tuesday, but two were released because of a lack of evidence.
A 17-year-old boy in the 9th grade at the Ea Young secondary school in the Krong Paek district was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of spreading a toxic chemical at a school, police in the Ea Young commune said.
A 15-year-old was arrested on April 4, they said.
In Kron Buk district, police in Binh Thuan said they had arrested two brothers, aged 15 and 17, a month ago. However, the schoolboys were released because of a lack of evidence.
The army's paper said one person was arrested in Binh Thuan commune in Krong Buk and six others in Ea Yong commune and Phuoc An town, in Krong Paek.
The suspects had been "hired by evil people to spread the chemicals" in schoolrooms across the province, the paper said.
"These are organized criminal actions aimed at destabilizing security and order, confusing public morale and sabotaging many facets of society," the paper said.
"It is transparent that evil people are plotting to exploit or even cheat the idle and mercenary children skipping school."
It was the first time that the official media had explicitly blamed the schoolroom attacks on political saboteurs.
Previously both officials and the state-run media had said only that they believed the poisonings were deliberate without specifying who they held responsible – HANOI (AFP)
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