More than 34 children were reported to have died painful deaths on Tuesday after being injected by contaminated measles vaccine in rebel-held Syria.

The vaccination was run under a United Nations program, which aimed to prevent a measles outbreak amid the civil war, but the program was temporarily put off following speculations that the vaccines may have been sabotaged.

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According to Dr. Abdulla Ajaj, one of the Doctors in the clinics in Idlib Province who helped give the vaccine, the doses which caused the deaths and sickness were a new batch that have only been delivered three days prior to its use.  

Investigations regarding the incident are currently ongoing, but Ajaj said that the batch of doses may have been stored improperly.

Meanwhile, several Syrian opposition sympathizers said it was possible that regime agents may have mixed the vaccines with cyanide, and have gone to social media to share photos of the dying children.

Mohammad Hamadi, a Syrian physician and secretary of Free Doctors Union said they are investigating whether it was a criminal act or a mistake by a member of a medical crew who helped administer the vaccine.

It is possible that a medical crew mistakenly used a muscle relaxant instead of a vaccine diluent when mixing the doses since its bottles looked the same, Hamadi said.

Doctors from several towns in Idlib said the children started to fall ill after receiving the vaccine. The number of deaths is expected to rise as many sick children are still in critical condition as of Tuesday night.

Uossm medical charity coordinator Daher Zidan released a statement saying the condition is severe and children were dying quickly. The situation is expected to get worse, Zidan added.

According to a statement issued by the Syrian American Medical Society, the victims, including infants, started exhibiting symptoms within minutes after having been given the dose. The symptoms included slow heart rate, laryngeal inflammation and tightness of breath.

In the clinic run by the society, 65 children displaying the symptoms who brought in, and 15 babies, all under the age of 1, were already dead upon arrival.  

The Unicef and the World Health Organization who launched the vaccination campaign have yet to report the actual number of casualties, but vowed to help investigate the incident.

The province of Idlib is one of the strongholds of the Western-supported Syrian rebels who are against the regime of President Bashar Assad.

The civil war in Syria is being further complicated by the presence of the Islamic State of Iraq andthe Levant (ISIL) and the Al Nusra Front, whose mass killings have sparked international outrage.

Tagssabotage, Syrian children, measles vaccine, ISIL, Al Nusra Front