The global anthrax threat reached Israel Thursday, as a senior secretary in the Jerusalem District Court opened an envelope containing suspicious white powder, the Tel Aviv-based Haaretz newspaper reported Saturday.
The discovery led the security guards to evacuate the building and call in the environment ministry's hazardous materials squad, who carried out all possible security measures for fighting bioweapons and cleaned the first floor with industrial materials, after which the public was allowed to re-enter the building.
According to the report, only the office where the envelope was opened remains sealed. In the future, mail arriving at the court will first undergo a security check before being delivered to the addressee.
However, calls on the subject to the police for assistance have increased dramatically. In one case, another envelope containing the suspicious powder prompted police to evacuate the second and third floors of the Malkha Mall in the southern part of the city.
But the test results for both envelops will only be known when special decontamination units release them.
Meanwhile, US authorities are looking for clues in the wake of spreading anthrax cases which resulted in a closure of Congress for five days after dozens of employees were exposed to the powder.
As the dust settles from the September 11 attacks in Washington and New York, the death of a Florida man from anthrax has US policy makers scrambling for ways to counter bioterrorists.
Although the verdict is not yet in on the cause of the Florida death, terrorism has not been ruled out, and disease researchers who deal with the government are speaking of a new urgency, according to an AP report this week.
"We suddenly realize, my God, we've got to deal with this," Dr. Myron Levine, director of the University of Maryland's Center for Vaccine Development, told the agency.
The words anthrax, smallpox, and plague are the first on the lips of US leaders and scientists concerned with bioterrorism, according to an online report this week by WebMD that catalogues the difficulties of using each of the diseases to wage war.
Anthrax, according to the report, is actually an unwieldy weapon because it cannot be delivered to large populations except in a hard-to-obtain powdered form perfected by Soviet scientists. Moreover, scientists believe they may have developed new antidotes for anthrax cases, which are actually treatable in the early stages - Albawaba.com
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