Mass food poisoning at Egypt's al- Azhar University on Tuesday led to the hospitalization of more than 500 students and triggered public outrage against the slack food safety practice at the institute.

As many as 561 Egyptian students have been poisoned by the university's cafeteria food while no death has been reported in the incident so far, spokesman for the Ministry of Health Yahia Moussa told Xinhua.

The incident occurred in the dormitory of Al-Azhar University in Nasr City, east of the capital Cairo, where the students felt spasms in the stomach and vomited after eating the lunch food from the cafeteria. They were immediately taken to several local hospitals for treatment.

In the wake of the incident, hundreds of angry students stormed Mashiakhet al-Azhar (the administration building of al-Azhar), demanding the dismissal of University President Osama al-Abd. The interior ministry had to send security forces to contain the protests.

The angry students claimed the real number of the poisoned topped 1,000.

The al-Azhar University Student Union's Representative Marwan Alaa was quoted by state-run al-Ahram online as saying "Food poisoning happened more than once at this university...Two weeks ago, we saw some worms in our food and told the university president about it but he took no action."

Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi visited the students being treated at Medical Insurance Hospital. According to a presidential statement, Medical Insurance Authority affirmed that all of the cases are under control and that most of the students have left the hospital.

Under-Secretary of the Ministry of Health Amr Qandil said that his ministry has taken samples of the food that caused the poisoning but final results are not out yet.

In many buildings at the university, clashes erupted between administration and students who demanded punishment for the employees responsible for preparing the students' food.

Prosecutor-General Talaat Ebrahim has launched an investigation into the incident and ordered to refer all cooking tools used in preparing the food and samples of the food as well as the vomit to a criminal laboratory.

Commenting on the incident, deputy head of the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party Essam al-Erian said the al- Azhar University leaders should be held responsible for the incident.

"Keeping the leading figures of al-Azhar University in their posts or appointing others with the same mentality would lead to more disasters in the university city," said al-Erian on his Facebook account. Endi

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