Kenya confirms presence of anthrax spores in an envelope mailed from the U.S.
By Andrew England, Associated Press, 10/18/01
NAIROBI, Kenya -- White powder in a letter mailed from Atlanta to a Kenyan has tested positive for anthrax spores, the health minister said Thursday, apparently the first case of tainted mail outside the United States since the Sept. 11 attacks.
Health Minister Sam Ongeri told a news conference that the unidentified recipient, a doctor who lives in Nairobi, and four family members "may have come into contact" with the spores and were being tested, but they are "not in danger." The powder was undergoing further tests at a government lab, he said.
It was unclear whether U.S. investigators had asked to be involved in the Kenyan cases, though Ongeri said his department was "perfectly capable" of handling the situation itself.
White powder was found in two other letters -- one to an official with the U.N. Environment Program in Nairobi and the other to a Kenyan businessman in the central town of Nyeri, Ongeri said. Those letters were also being tested at the state-run Kenya Medical Research Institute, he said.
The letter that tested positive for anthrax had been mailed Sept. 8 from Atlanta, Ongeri said, and was received in Kenya on Oct. 9. It was opened on Oct. 11.
The hand-addressed letter to the U.N. official was mailed from Pakistan, and the letter to the businessman appeared to have been mailed from Nairobi, he said.
UNEP spokesman Nick Nuttall said the letter from Pakistan had seemed suspicious.
"It was a very sort of dirty looking envelope with rather eccentric writing on it. It just looked dirty, odd and suspicious. We get thousands of letters and some do look a bit odd," Nuttall said.
Anthrax is not contagious and can be treated with antibiotics. It is endemic in this East African nation, infecting people who come in contact with contaminated meat or hides, Ongeri said.
In the United States, four people are known to have contracted anthrax and dozens more have been exposed since the disease was detected at the office of a tabloid newspaper in Florida on Oct. 4.
Since then, tainted letters have been found at the office of NBC anchor Tom Brokaw, The New York Times, a Microsoft office in Nevada and the office of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle. The last caused a worried House of Representatives to recess on Wednesday.
The anthrax attacks have caused jitters worldwide. There have been hundreds of scares and hoaxes, but before the announcement in Kenya, no cases outside the United States had tested positive.
In France on Thursday, at least 19 people were hospitalized after white powder turned up at the National Assembly in Paris and at a post office in the eastern city of Nancy. The substances were being tested.
In Paris, a spokesman for the legislature said three people had been taken to the hospital, while a legislative spokesman said four had been. Neither mail service nor the legislature was halted. In Nancy, 16 postal workers were hospitalized.
Also Thursday, an envelope containing white powder was received by the U.S. Consulate in Berlin, officials said. Two similar letters were sent to U.S. installations this week, and another was sent to the Environment Ministry; all were being tested, officials said.
In Greece, the health ministry was closed Thursday after an employee opened an envelope containing powder addressed to former U.S. ambassador Nicholas Burns and a note that said "death," police said. It was not immediately clear how the letter ended up at the ministry building.
Burns ended his stint in Athens earlier this year and is now the U.S. ambassador to NATO.
Authorities in Kuala Lumpur insisted Thursday that the letter sent to the Microsoft office in Nevada was not contaminated in Malaysia, though it appeared to have been mailed from that Southeast Asian country. Six people exposed to the letter tested negative. The remark came after a scare at a factory office in northern Penang state, where workers became suspicious about an envelope from Illinois because it appeared to be empty.
In Beijing, government health workers disinfected people who came into contact with suspicious substances enclosed in a letter sent to an American firm, China's Foreign Ministry said Thursday. The substance was being tested. The letter contained information about the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement.
Kenya was the scene of an anti-American attack in 1998, when a car bomb exploded outside the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, almost at the same time as an explosion at the U.S. Embassy in Tanzania. The blasts killed 231 people, including 12 Americans. Osama bin Laden, the top suspect in the recent attacks on the United States, has been indicted for the embassy bombings.
Two men convicted in the bombings were to be sentenced Thursday in New York, amid tight security just blocks from the rubble of the World Trade Center.
