A child has died and over 800 people have been taken to hospital after falling ill with food poisoning after eating at a restaurant in Amman, reports say.
Local media say that the restaurant had been offering cut-price shwarmas, the rotisserie meat snack.
Health officials from the area have established that the meat had not been refrigerated in what were temperatures.
Three people connected the incident including the restaurant owner have so far been arrested.
Health officials said the five-year-old that passed was one of the 826 people admitted to a hospital after the first cases of food poisoning were detected in the Ain al-Bashra area of north-west Amman on Monday evening.
The boy suffered heart failure and doctors, unfortunately, could not save him, Mohammad Abed, the director of the Prince Hussein Hospital, told a local media.
Health Minister Saad Jaber said as of yesterday, four people were taken in intensive care while the 321 remained in hospital in a stable condition.
“All those affected said they had eaten meals from the same restaurant,” he was quoted by the AFP news agency as saying.
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Local media from the area reported that the shawarma meal had been put on special offer at half its normal price, resulting in a higher than the normal number of diners at the eatery.
The Ministry of Health said the meat had become infected because it was not refrigerated and laboratory tests had shown bacteria in the meat and poultry.
Jordan has of late been experiencing high temperatures in recent days, with Amman going above 40c (100F).
