Spiked Beer Poisons 238, Kills 69 at Funeral

According to RT, health authorities confirmed that nearly 70 people who drank beer at a funeral service in Mozambique died from poisoning. The culprit was locally brewed beer called Pombe and authorities believe that it was poisoned with crocodile bile during the funeral.

An official from Mozambique, Paula Bernardo, the district director for Health, Women and Social Action, said that all the victims had attended a funeral on Saturday and had consumed Pompe. An interesting detail is that people who drank the beer in the morning of the funeral day did not show any symptoms of sickness while those who drank it in the afternoon fell sick, which explains why authorities believe contamination happened during the funeral.

In addition to 69 people left dead, one of them was the local woman who brewed the beer. There are 169 more victims who are currently receiving treatment at local hospitals for complications due to poisoning.

The officials, who expressed that they do not have the means to manage this kind of situation, fear that the death toll might go up even more. Bernardo told RT, "As we prepared to determine the cause of death of people we began to receive a lot of people with diarrhea and other muscle aches. After that we began to receive dead bodies from several neighborhoods."

The provincial health director, Carle Mosse, also stated that they do not currently have the capacity to test the samples to shed more light on to this tragic and unexpected incident. Due to these kind of technical challenges and lack of resources, all the blood and beer samples are being sent to Maputo, the capital of Mozambique.

While the samples are on their way for further analysis, authorities are still investigating the incident. It is said that health officials are trying to support the affected families by collecting donations for things such as food and clothing.