The number of people infected with anthrax in the United States rose to eight Friday, as authorities scrambled to identify the bioterrorists and traces of anthrax appeared in South America.
As governments worldwide were inundated by alerts and hoaxes, initial tests on letters in Brazil and Argentina showed traces of anthrax, a day after Kenya became the second non-US target of bioterrorism.
In Brazil, the Rio de Janeiro bureau of the New York Times received a letter mailed from New York containing a suspicious powdery substance that had tentatively tested positive for traces of the deadly disease.
The analysis "suggests the presence of bacteria or spores that may be anthrax, according to Brazilian authorities," the newspaper said in a statement, adding that more tests were underway.
Argentina's Health Minister Hector Lombardo said a letter sent to a Buenos Aires woman mailed from Miami had also tested positive for anthrax spores, but that the woman was not at risk of infection because "she did not open the letter."
In the United States, officials said that a second New Jersey postal worker was infected with skin anthrax. Another man who works at the same sorting plant was earlier revealed to have contracted the disease.
Investigators believe that anthrax-laced letters sent to NBC anchor Tom Brokaw and US Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle both passed through that sorting center in Hamilton, New Jersey.
The New York Post newspaper also confirmed Friday that one of its employees had contracted anthrax, becoming the fourth New York resident to contract skin anthrax in which appears to be aimed at US media and politicians.
Homeland Security Chief Tom Ridge linked several of the cases, saying tests had shown the strains of anthrax sent to NBC news in New York, a tabloid newspaper in Florida, and the senate in Washington were "indistinguishable."
As more alerts wrought havoc in diplomacy, business and government, Yemen and Lebanon and South Africa joined the ranks of countries targeted by letters containing suspicious powders.
Afghanistan's Taliban militia, currently being targeted by the US military machine, denied any link to the anthrax scares, saying the regime was totally ignorant of the disease and its possible use as a biological weapon.
"We don't even know what it is," the Islamic militia's ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef, said.
Russia also dismissed as "groundless" media speculation that the anthrax baccilla used in apparent terror attacks in the United States could have originated in a Cold War Soviet military laboratory.
The worldwide alarm started when a tabloid newspaper employee in Florida died on October 5 after contracting respiratory anthrax. A colleague of his is still under treatment for the same more dangerous version of the disease.
Other cases of infection have been reported at news companies with employees of NBC and CBS networks, and the baby of an ABC employee all contracting skin anthrax.
And as nervousness increased amid fears of possible biowarfare, the demand for anti-anthrax drugs escalated worldwide.
India stepped in to offer the United States a million dollars' worth of the antibiotic Ciprofloxacin, to help shore up supplies in the event of wide scale requirement of the drug.
German pharmaceutical giant Bayer said it was seeking an "equitable solution" with Canada after Ottawa turned to a generic manufacturer to supply 900,000 pills of an anti-anthrax treatment. Canada was unapologetic.
The British, Dutch and German parliaments were Friday forced to delay business after suspicious substances were found.
The alarm was raised in Zagreb after a deputy opened the suspicious letter in the parliamentary chamber. Another suspicious envelope forced the closure of the German chancellery's mail room for a second time in a week.
The British High Commission in Pakistan received a suspicious letter that eventually proved harmless, as the US and Australian diplomatic missions in Sri Lanka also began probing suspicious letters.
But the US State Department said white powder contained in a letter addressed to the US general consulate in Osaka, Japan, did not contain anthrax bacteria.
US authorities have yet to establish a clear link between the anthrax mailings and the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that killed 5,500 people.
US President George W. Bush said in Shanghai he would not be surprised if evidence was found linking it to Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden, blamed by Washington for the attacks.
A Kenyan man who received an anthrax-tainted letter from the southern US city of Atlanta was undergoing a course of antibiotics.
In England, Canada, and the United States, courts were gearing up to prosecute three men for alleged anthrax hoaxes -- Washington, (AFP)
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
