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Frankfurt, Germany • North Korea is blaming football's worst doping scandal in almost two decades on using steroid-laced medicine from musk deer glands to treat injuries from a lightning strike at a training camp for the Women's World Cup.

FIFA President Sepp Blatter said Saturday that after two North Korean players were caught during the tournament, three more positive results came in when the world football federation took the unprecedented decision to test all members of the squad.

"This is a shock," Blatter told a news conference. "We are confronted with a very, very bad case of doping, and it hurts."

The last doping case at a major event came at the men's 1994 World Cup in the United States, when Diego Maradona was kicked out after testing positive for using a cocktail of banned substances.

Meanwhile, Colombia reserve goalkeeper Yineth Varon has been suspended for failing an out-of-competition test just before the Women's World Cup in the wake of undergoing hormonal treatment. It was the first doping case in the history of the women's Cup.

All attention, however, turned to the North Korean cases on Saturday.

"The North Korean officials said they didn't use it to improve performance. They said they had a serious lightning accident with several players injured and they gave it as therapy," Michel D'Hooghe, head of FIFA's medical committee, said in an interview.

A North Korean delegation told Blatter and D'Hooghe early Saturday that the steroids were accidentally taken with traditional Chinese medicines based on musk deer glands. After North Korea lost its opener against the United States, team officials first claimed that lightning had struck several players on June 8.

The case will be taken up by FIFA's disciplinary committee. Players face a ban of up to two years for such infractions.

Defenders Song Jong Sun and Jong Pok Sim tested positive for steroids after North Korea's first two group games and were suspended for the last match. The team was eliminated in the first round.

The names of the three other players would be made public only at a later stage, FIFA said.