Political leaders called on a jittery Australia to stay calm yesterday as biochemical attack fears fueled by the US anthrax cases led to the evacuation of a US consulate and other buildings around the country.
The US consulate-general in Melbourne was evacuated briefly after a suspicious package was found. Similar incidents caused disruptions at the Australian Taxation Office in Canberra, a Melbourne newspaper and a Sydney suburban post office.
Six suspicious parcels containing powdery substances were seized in the Queensland cities of Brisbane and Townsville. Media said a letter with a powdery substance was found at the British consulate in Brisbane.
In total 26 people underwent decontamination after the bio-chemical scares. No one has been found to be contaminated.
"I think it's important that we don't start leaping at shadows," New South Wales State Premier Bob Carr said. "We need to take every precaution, we need to be ever alert, but we shouldn't go into panic mode without having things properly looked at."
Australian government buildings, post offices and major institutions are on heightened alert as fears of a biological assault in the US grow.
In New York on Sunday, a police officer and two lab technicians who were investigating an anthrax case at NBC network offices tested positive for the bacteria, the city's mayor, Rudolph Giuliani, said.
Nevada officials said four people who may have come into contact with a contaminated letter sent to the Microsoft office in Reno from Malaysia tested negative while results weren't known for two others.
The US has so far not shared any information with Malaysia about the letter, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said in Kuala Lumpur yesterday.
"They don't give us any information. Once we get the information we will investigate," Mahathir told reporters when asked whether police were making any headway into links between the postal germ attack and Malaysia.
Both Mahathir and Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar cautioned against jumping to conclusions that the anthrax spores were placed in the envelope in Malaysia.
"We are not a country that produces anthrax," the foreign minister said. "I think definitely there is no truth that the thing originates from Malaysia."
The new cases brought to 12 the number of people in the US who either have anthrax or have been exposed to it. That does not include a second NBC employee who is taking antibiotics after displaying possible symptoms of the disease.
The anthrax scare began Oct. 4 when it was confirmed that a Florida tabloid editor had contracted the inhaled form of the bacteria. His death a day later was the first resulting from the disease in the US since 1976.
News of the exposures has caused jitters around the world.
An international airport terminal in the Austrian city of Vienna was closed late Sunday after a passenger reported finding suspicious powder in a newsstand, which was tested negative for anthrax and appeared to be starch.
Hundreds of people were evacuated from Canterbury Cathedral in England on Sunday after a worker said he saw a man dropping white powder in one of the chapels. The cathedral was reopened yesterday after police said tests found no traces of harmful substances in the powder.
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