RIYADH, Aug 29: Saudi Arabia has sent frozen samples of dead camels to France to try to discover why dozens are dying each day, along with cattle and sheep, newspapers said on Wednesday.

Al-Watan newspaper said 60 more camels died on Tuesday as well as 400 sheep and seven cows. There was no official confirmation of the figures.

The camel samples were sent on Tuesday as Saudi officials came under increasing criticism by owners of herds for not acting more quickly to try to determine ways to tackle the problem.

On Aug 25, some two weeks after the beasts began to die, Agriculture Minister Fahd bin Abdul Rahman Balghnaim said nearly 2,000 camels had died.

“It is not because of an infectious disease. These were cases of poisoning,” the minister was quoted as saying by the SPA state news agency.

Balghnaim said the animals were fed bran that had been bought from traders whose bran stocks were contaminated. He put the final number of dead camels in recent weeks at 1,982.

Laboratory research was being carried out to reveal exactly what was wrong with the animal feed, he said at the time.

According to figures in the Saudi press, at least 5,000 camels have now died and thousands more are sick.

Official figures put the total number of camels in the kingdom in 2005 at 862,000.

Just before the camels began to die, newspapers had reported an outbreak of foot and mouth disease — aphthous fever, which can also affect camels — in the kingdom.

Al-Yaum, citing an agriculture ministry official, said colleagues had intercepted “a cargo of 351 sheep, including 336 which were suspected of being affected by aphthous fever, imported from Iran by a breeder.

“The breeder was asked to put the beasts in quarantine to await analysis from a laboratory in Riyadh ... But the stockbreeder sold the 336 animals without awaiting the results.” Another newspaper, the daily al-Madina said the sheep had been brought in via Bahrain which is linked to Saudi Arabia by a causeway.—AFP