Another five members of a Cretan village family that has been afflicted by severe food poisoning four times over the past four months were yesterday being treated in hospital with poisoning symptoms, doctors said.

Rhodanthi Dimitroulaki and two other adults from the village of Archontiko near Iraklion were out of danger, while two children had been placed in intensive care.

They were all hospitalized on Sunday after eating lamb’s head with rice.

This was the fourth separate case of food poisoning involving the Dimitroulakis family since December, when Maria Dimitroulaki, 50, pled innocent before a prosecutor to the charge that she deliberately added insecticide to a pot of chicken and rice that she had cooked for her family, which led to six people being rushed to hospital. A few days later, her 80-year-old mother and 20-year-old son fell ill after eating fish soup.

A medical examiner ordered the remains of the family’s Sunday meal to be investigated, along with one open and one half-empty carton of rice found in their home.