A 12-year-old girl has died and seven other children have been taken to hospital in an outbreak of severe food poisoning centred around a northern French town, reports the BBC.
Symptoms began to emerge on 12 June in and around Saint-Quentin, south of Lille, with the children rushed to hospital over the following days.
The cause of the outbreak that has affected children aged 1-12 is yet to be confirmed, but two local butchers have been closed as a precaution as several children are thought to have eaten meat from the shops.
The girl died on Monday from a rare condition called haemolytic uraemic syndrome (HUS) linked to acute kidney failure; the most common cause of that is E.coli bacteria.
The latest case was reported on Wednesday evening, the regional health authority in Hauts-de-France said.
All eight children were admitted to hospital with severe digestive symptoms, such as bloody diarrhoea, and five of them had developed HUS, the authority said.