Washington - An unidentified bacteria, possibly anthrax, has been discovered on a mail pouch at the US embassy in Greece, the State Department said yesterday.
"We've also got traces of bacteria, it's not necessarily anthrax, but some kind of bacteria, in a mailbag that we found that we had in Athens," spokesman Mr Richard Boucher said.
"Additional testing of that is underway as a preventative measure (but) any embassy staff who handled the mail from that bag have been put on antibiotics," he told reporters.
Separately, a spokesman at a US Navy base in southern Greece said the facility had received a suspect letter via the US military postal service yesterday.
If confirmed as anthrax, the case at the Athens embassy would mark the third US diplomatic mission to have found the bacteria in
diplomatic pouches sent from Washington before all such mail was halted after an employee at an off-site State Department facility contracted inhalation anthrax on October 26th.
US embassies in Lima, Peru and Vilnius, Lithuania have also discovered trace amounts of anthrax in mail pouches.
In Washington, trace amounts of the bacteria have also been found at two mailrooms in the main State Department building and one at an annex.