A Kenyan family became the first confirmed victims of an anthrax mail attack outside the United States on Thursday as governments worldwide struggled to cope with an escalating number of bioterror alerts and hoaxes.
Four members of the family were exposed to the deadly bacteria through a letter posted in Atlanta on September 8 -- three days before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon -- and received in Kenya about a month later, Health Minister Sam Ongeri said.
The letter also bears a marking from Miami. No details of the family affected have been released.
Ongeri said that two other letters, including one received this week at a United Nations complex in Nairobi, were being examined.
The US embassy in Nairobi was destroyed by a massive bomb in 1998, killing 213 people in an attack masterminded by the terrorist network of Osama bin Laden, the chief suspect in the suicide plane attacks in the United States.
In Washington, US congressional offices were shut for a second day on Thursday after 31 US Senate employees tested positive for exposure to anthrax, bringing to 44 the number of people in the United States found to have been exposed. One person has died.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Robert Mueller said on Wednesday there were similarities between a contaminated letter sent to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and another sent to NBC television anchor Tom Brokaw in New York.
The envelopes bore similar handwriting and were each postmarked Trenton, New Jersey.
Elsewhere in the world, an anthrax alert was triggered in Japan when the prime minister's office, the US consulate general in western Japan and the Asahi Shimbun and Yomiuri Shimbun newspapers received suspicious letters full of white powder.
A letter delivered to Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's official residence on Wednesday was found to contain starch.
In Paris, an alert was sparked when a letter containing white powder was discovered at the French National Assembly, the lower house of parliament, on Thursday.
The powder was being analysed at a laboratory and four people had been taken to hospital for observation.
But while the news from Kenya led to increased vigilance in an already newrvous climate, it became clear that most of the scares were hoaxes.
Sixteen suspicious letters sent to newspapers, leading companies and a well-known monk in Thailand were found to contain tapioca flour.
Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra urged the public not to panic, saying the letters were sent by "a few mentally ill people".
A suspicious white powder discovered on board an Austrian passenger jet, forcing it to make a U-turn while en route to New Delhi, was harmless, an airline spokesman said Thursday.
The British government Thursday briefed more than 35,000 doctors and other health workers on how to prepare for terrorist attacks using biological agents such as bubonic plague, smallpox and botulism.
It was seen as a sign that the government now considered these a threat alongside anthrax, which has sparked a series of scares across the country.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell, attending the APEC conference in Shanghai, on Thursday noted the irony that in a world steeled against high-tech terrorism, low-tech anthrax scares, most of them hoaxes, had created panic.
"We all worry about cyber-terrorism ... and what did they get us with? The mail system," he said.
"Anthrax or just talcum powder causes panic," Powell said.
Robert Broadfoot of the Political and Economic Consultancy in Hong Kong said the scares could have profound consequences as repeated security alerts shut down businesses and transport links -- Paris, (AFP)
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