22 Indian children dead from school meal

TWENTY-TWO children have died after eating a free lunch feared to contain poisonous chemicals at a school in easte India, as angry protests erupted over the tragedy.

Thirty more children remain ill in hospital after consuming lunch cooked at a village primary school in the impoverished state of Bihar, state education minister P K Shahi said.

\"After 21 deaths, we have just heard that one more child has died while undergoing treatment,\" the state's health secretary, Vyas Ji, told AFP, as suspicion focused on the possible presence of insecticide in the food.

There were emotional scenes as children, their limbs dangling and heads lolling to one side, were brought to a hospital in the Bihar city of Chhapra.

Other children, lying listless on stretchers, were placed on intravenous drips amid chaotic scenes at the hospital. Outside, inconsolable relatives wept.

\"My children had gone to school to study. They came back home crying, and said it hurts,\" one distraught father told the NDTV network.

\"I took them into my arms, but they kept crying, saying their stomach hurt very badly.\"

Running to the school to find out what had happened, the father said he saw \"many bodies of children lying on the ground\".

Bihar education minister P K Shahi said the midday meal \"appears to be poisonous\".

Twenty of the children, all aged under 10, were buried near the school in the village of Masrakh on Wednesday moing as angry residents armed with poles and sticks took to the streets of Chhapra.

The mob smashed windows of police buses and other vehicles and tued over a police booth in Chhapra, the main city of Saran district where the school is located.

\"Hundreds of angry people staged a protest in Saran since late Tuesday night, demanding ste action against govement officials responsible for this shocking incident,\" said district govement official S K Mall.

A preliminary investigation has shown the meal may have contained traces of phosphate from insecticide in the vegetables, Sinha from the local govement told AFP.

He said doctors were treating victims with atropine, which is effective against organophosphate poisoning.

Media reports quoted villagers as saying the use of contaminated, foul-smelling mustard oil for cooking at the school could also have caused the deaths.

\"Investigators are examining midday meal samples and samples of victims' vomit. Only the final report of inquiry will reveal the real cause,\" Sinha said.

State chief minister Nitish Kumar has announced compensation of 200,000 rupees ($3600) for bereaved families.

Free lunches are offered to impoverished students in state-run schools as part of govement welfare measures in many of India's 29 states.

Bihar is one of the country's poorest and most densely-populated states.