Anthrax terrorists blamed for postal workers’ deaths

Anthrax probably killed two US postal workers from a centre that delivers mail to Washington, officials have said.

Health officials also expressed concern about as many as nine other Washington-area patients who have symptoms consistent with the disease.

The officials did not say whether any worked for the postal service.

‘‘The mail and our employees have become the target of terrorists,’’ said Postmaster General John Potter.

Washington DC health officials issued an urgent call for 2,000 workers at the city’s central Brentwood mail centre to undergo screening for the disease, and defended the decision not to order tests last week.

‘‘I think they moved quickly, as quickly as they could,’’ said Tom Ridge, the nation’s homeland security director.

Some postal employees expressed anger that officials did not order testing when an anthrax-laced letter showed up on October 15 at Senate majority leader Tom Daschle’s office.

The letter to Daschle is the only reported case of anthrax-tainted mail in the Washington area, but all mail destined for the city is routed through the Brentwood facility.

Congressional leaders announced plans for the House and Senate to convene today. At the same time, the House and Senate’s office buildings will remain closed, including the six where politicians and staff have their offices.

‘‘The Capitol, of course, has been safe and we have ample reason to believe that within the next few days we’ll be able to open up the other buildings as well,’’ said Daschle.

At the same time, several congressional sources said preliminary testing had raised concern about possible anthrax at three spots in the Capitol during the day. One of the sources said all three were in the same room.

Daschle’s office had no immediate comment. Capitol Police spokesman Dan Nichols said he would not discuss preliminary testing.

In all, officials have tallied three suspected deaths from anthrax nationwide and nine other confirmed infections six cases of the skin variety and the other three the more dangerous inhalation type.

Nearly six weeks after terrorists hijacked airliners and struck New York and Washington, and with American warplanes bombing Afghanistan, Ridge said the nation was fighting two fronts in the same war. ‘‘There’s a battlefield outside this country and there’s a battlefield inside this country,’’ he said.

On a day of rapidly unfolding events, Potter said the Postal Service had stopped cleaning its machinery with blowers, a procedure that could have caused lethal anthrax spores to spread through the air. He also said equipment was being purchased that ‘‘can eradicate and sanitise the mail.’’

And Mitchell Cohen of the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention acknowledged that investigators did not understand how victims had inhaled anthrax, because the letter to Daschle was taped shut. ‘‘This phenomena is an evolution,’’ he said. ‘‘How it’s actually occurring isn’t clear.’’

Despite a heightened sense of alarm, hospital officials in suburban Maryland outside Washington said one of the two men who died had originally been sent home from the emergency room, only to return a little more than 24 hours later and succumb quickly to the disease.

Dr Venkat Mani, who leads the infectious disease program at the Southern Maryland Medical Centre in Clinton, said the cause of death of a 47-year-old man had been listed as preliminary pulmonary anthrax and septic shock.