Parcel containing anthrax sent to PM house

Pakistani police said Wednesday they were investigating how and why a parcel containing anthrax was sent to the prime minister’s official residence in the capital Islamabad last month.

It appeared to be the first reported case of anthrax sent to a government office in Pakistan, a nuclear-armed country of 174 million that is battling a Taliban insurgency and where Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden was shot dead.

“The parcel containing anthrax powder was sent last month, about 20 days ago. After the laboratory test confirmed that the parcel contained anthrax we registered a case against unknown people,” said police officer Hakim Khan.

There was no immediate confirmation from the prime minister’s house, which lies in the heavily secured secretariat area of the capital Islamabad.

Neither was it immediately clear who was responsible, or how they could have accessed anthrax, of any quality, in Pakistan.

Police said the parcel was posted from the Jamshoro district in southern province Sindh, the capital of which is Karachi — Pakistan’s biggest city used by the United States to ship supplies to troops fighting in Afghanistan.

“We have sent a police team to investigate it and to find the culprits there,” said Khan, an officer at the secretariat police station.

But in Jamshoro, 180 kilometres (113 miles) northeast of Karachi, police said they had not been informed by Islamabad of any anthrax delivery, instead finding out through local media reports.

“We have not yet received any instructions from the government to investigate this matter,” local police official Bashir Ahmed told AFP.

“We have asked the local post office protectively to check their records to know about the sender.

“We can’t say how long it will take to complete the investigation. We expect a quick result if the sender’s identity is not fake.”

In November 2001, police arrested two men suspected of sending a letter containing anthrax to Pakistan’s largest newspaper, Jang.

In the United States, anthrax mailings rattled a jittery American public just days after the September 11, 2001 attacks that killed almost 3,000 people.

US government scientist Bruce Ivins committed suicide in July 2008 as FBI agents were about to bring charges against him over the anthrax campaign, which killed five people and injured 17.