Istanbul hotel evacuated after 3 tourists die of suspected poisoning
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
Two children, aged six and three, as well as their mother died after falling ill, while the father remains in a critical condition.
PHOTO: X/@BPTHABER
- A hotel in Istanbul was evacuated after a Turkish-German family staying there suffered suspected poisoning. The mother and two children died.
- Two more hotel guests were hospitalised with nausea and vomiting on Nov 15. Police detained a hotel worker and two pest control staff.
- The family fell ill after eating street food and the hotel room may have been sprayed with pesticides. The father remains in critical condition.
AI generated
ISTANBUL - The hotel where a family of Turkish-German tourists were staying when they suffered suspected poisoning that killed the mother and two children, was evacuated on Nov 15, local media reported.
All guests staying at the unnamed hotel in the Fatih neighbourhood near Istanbul’s historic peninsula were relocated to other hotels, BirGun newspaper said, without saying how many people were involved.
Another two tourists staying at the same hotel were taken to hospital on Nov 15 after coming down with nausea and vomiting, the paper said, without elaborating.
The family fell ill on Nov 12 after eating several popular street food dishes in the waterside neighbourhood of Ortakoy, at the foot of a bridge spanning the Bosphorus.
They were taken to hospital but the two children, aged six and three, died on Nov 13 and the mother a day later, the justice minister said.
The father remained in “critical condition”, Istanbul’s regional health chief Abdullah Emre Guner said late on Nov 14 on X.
Different media reports looked at various foods the family was thought to have eaten.
But investigators have also discovered that a room on the ground floor of the hotel had recently been sprayed with pesticides, the Hurriyet news website reported on Nov 15.
Police had detained a hotel employee and two pest control workers, raising the number of people held in connection with the incident to seven, it added.
They said the family was Turkish, but living in Germany. They had come to Istanbul on holiday. AFP
