A 12-year-old boy was hos-pitalized yesterday after exposure to mustard gas aban-doned by Japanese troops during World War II.

　　The latest victim raised to 37 the number of people stricken in the city of Qiqihar in Hei-longjiang Province.

　　Doctors at No 203 Hospital of the People's Liberation Army said Gai Zunxu, a pupil at Tianqi Primary School, was poisoned while playing at the No 5 Middle School.

　　The school is one of the 11 places contaminated by che-mical weapons uncovered at a construction site.

　　Blisters had appeared on the backs of his feet when he was admitted to the hospital.

　　Meanwhile, the first batch of donated medicines arrived yesterday morning at the hospital, which has appealed to domestic pharmaceutical firms for emergency aid due to its growing number of patients exposed to chemical weapons abandoned by Japanese troops during World War II.

　　The medicines, valued at about 300,000 yuan (US36,150), were offered by two pharmaceutical enterprises in the southwestern province of Sichuan.

　　They are mainly for anti-bacterial treatment and im-proving the victims' health.

　　In the No 203 Hospital the number of patients exposed to the mustard gas from the chemical weapons had risen to 37 by yesterday morning.

　　The drastic rise in the number of victims has resulted in an acute shortage of antibi-otics and drugs for improving immunity, according to doctors with the hospital.

　　Much more medicine is on the way to the hospital, said Sun Jinghai, president of the hospital.

　　The conditions of five of the hospitalized victims had improved markedly and they are expected to be discharged from the hospital very soon, doctors said.

　　However, two of the victims are still critical and eight others are serious.

　　The chemical weapons, discovered on August 4, were stored in five metallic barrels, one of which was accidentally broken, causing an oil-like substance to leak into the soil.

　　Unaware of the nature of the material, two workers later bought the barrels, cut them up, and then sold them to a waste station in a residential com-munity.

　　The situation worsened when the polluted soil from the construction site was removed to several different places.

　　Technical experts later confirmed that the barrels contained chemical weapons left by the Japanese army during the Second World War and the oil-like substance was mustard gas.

　　A city of 5.6 million with a history of more than 300 years, Qiqihar is the economic, scientific and technological and cultural center of Heilongjiang Province as well as a major equipment manufacturing center of China.

　　A total of 775 bombs and artillery shells and 28 gas bombs abandoned by Japanese troops have been found in the city since 2001.