Iran’s foreign ministry says it summoned Oman’s acting chargé d’affaires in Tehran on Sunday to protest what it called groundless media reports linking the deaths of two people in Oman to bottled water imported from Iran.
The summons came after state-affiliated Oman Observer cited Royal Oman Police as saying the country banned the import of bottled water from Iran after two people died from drinking a contaminated batch.
Abdolrasoul Shabibi, director of the ministry’s second Persian Gulf department, formally protested what he described as “unfounded and negative media coverage” of Iranian products and urged Omani authorities to clarify the facts swiftly.
Shabibi added that the incident had nothing to do with the Iranian company’s drinking water and was in fact “a family-related criminal case driven by revenge.”
The Emirati website The National quoted Oman's police as saying an expatriate woman died on September 29, and an Omani man died in hospital on October 1, after being in critical condition for two days.
The source of the poisoning was traced to a contaminated batch of Uranus Star bottled water from Iran, the report said.
It said laboratory tests confirmed the contamination after samples were collected.
It added that Oman's authorities began withdrawing the product from local markets and warned the public not to drink Uranus Star water.
