TEHRAN, June 18: A hospital patient died in western Iran because staff had abandoned him to watch Sunday’s Senegal-Sweden World Cup football match on television, a press report said Tuesday.

The daily Entekhab, quoting relatives and friends of the unnamed 50-year-old man, said that after he died of a heart attack his two children attacked personnel and broke windows in the hospital in Ilam.

“Everyone was watching the television, it’s unacceptable,” a friend told the paper.

The management denied the charge, saying a heart specialist was on the scene and staff tried for 45 minutes to revive the man.—AFP