More than 100 children have been hospitalized with food poisoning in Russia's southern republic of North Ossetia, health officials said.

"Some 117 pre-schoolers have been hospitalized during the past two days," said Uruzmag Djanayev, the head doctor at a children's hospital in the regional center of Vladikavkaz where all of the toddlers have been admitted.

"All of them attended two kindergartens in Oktyabrskoye," a town 10 kilometers (six miles) north of the city, he told AFP.

"At present, the childrens' condition is satisfactory," he said. "The diagnosis is food poisoning. We think it may be dysentery but we won't know for sure until Monday, when test results are in."

All of the children were being kept under quarantine in the hospital's infectious unit until then, he said.

The region's chief sanitation offical, Taimuraz Butayev, said the children contracted the food poisoning from dairy products that they ate at the kindergartens.

He said authorities had pinpointed the production dates of the dairy products in question and had removed them from sale throughout the republic.

Prosecutors have launched a criminal investigation into the incident.