Update: Iran arrests five over deaths of Saudi children in hotel

Five people have been arrested over the death of four children of a group of Saudi pilgrims who were poisoned on Sunday in a hotel in northern Iran, State IRIB TV reported Monday.

"Hotel managers have been questioned and five people have been arrested" after the Saudi pilgrims were poisoned, an Iranian Judiciary spokesman, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, was quoted as saying.

Towhid Hotel of Mashhad, where the Saudi pilgrims stayed, was shut down on Monday for further investigation, the chief of Mashhad Hotels Union, Mohammad Qanei, told IRIB.

Official IRNA news agency reported earlier on Monday a total of 33 Saudi pilgrims were poisoned, including three three-year-old boys and a 14-year-old girl who died in a hospital in the religious city of Mashhad.

The pilgrims were poisoned by vapour from a substance used as pesticide in the hotel, IRIB TV quoted Rassoul Dinarvand, who heads the Iranian Food and Medicine Organization, as saying.

The organization has banned the use of such poison in hotels, Dinarvand said, without naming the substance.

Further investigation is underway to determine whether its use was "deliberate" or not, Dinarvand said.

Millions of Iranians and foreign pilgrims go to the northwestern city of Mashhad annually to visit a renowned Shiite Muslim shrine. Endit