The mysterious illness that has hit scores of schoolchildren in &to=http://english.pravda.ru/main/18/87/344/16495_chechnya.html' target=_blank>Chechnya, fueling speculation that it could be linked to a nerve gas, is of psychological origin and likely has been caused by stress in the fighting-plagued Russian republic, doctors said Friday.
About 80 people, including 58 children, fell ill this week in several towns with breathing trouble, headaches and cramps, prompting authorities to close schools.
Some local officials said the symptoms could indicate a form of &to=http://english.pravda.ru/war/2002/10/10/37987.html' target=_blank>nerve-gas poisoning, but a panel of top Russian medical experts sent to Chechnya firmly rejected the allegations Friday and said that the disease had psychological causes.
"The symptoms indicate that it's a psychoneurological disease," Zurab Kikelidze, a deputy head of Moscow's Serbsky Institute, the nation's top center for nerve illnesses, said in remarks broadcast on Russia's NTV television.
Chechnya's health officials pointed at stress from fighting in the region as a likely cause, said Sergei Petrov, a spokesman for Emergency Situations Ministry's branch in southern Russia.
Russian forces retreated from Chechnya in 1996 after a 20-month war that left the Caucasus region de facto independent. They returned in 1999, after Chechen rebels raided a neighboring region and after a series of apartment house bombings.
Large-scale battles in Chechnya have ended, but rebels continued to stage regular raids and land mine explosions against federal forces and their local collaborators, reportsv AP.
O.Ch.
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