Bucharest / Rumania (RNC Agency) 11.08.1997

More than 60 Roma from a village in northwest Rumania were in hospital with food poisoning after eating horse meat, police said on Monday. Police in Oradea, on the border with Hungary, said 64 members of Roma community reported food poisoning symptoms after eating meat from a three-month-old foal which a Roma leader had bought on the cheap from a horse trader. Food poisoning is common in post-communist Rumania, where at least 13 people have died this year from poisonous mushrooms. The latest four deaths, in cluding two children, were reported last week, after floods affected the Balkan country. Many poverty-stricken Romanians resort to eating cheap meat bought from shady peddlars or ignore a ban on unauthorised picking and sales of mushrooms. More than 60 peo ple, mostly children, have suffered from eating poisoned mushrooms.