White Powder Sent To Foreign Missions In New York

November 10, 2009 6:41 a.m. EST

Manhattan, NY (AHN) - Letters containing suspicious white powder were sent to three foreign missions in New York on Monday. No one has been harmed so far from the substance, but authorities are still investigating.

According to CBS 2, the letters were sent to the missions of Austria, France and Uzbekistan. The New York Fire Department contaminated more than 30 people at the French mission, but no one was sent to a hospital for treatment.

News 4 reports preliminary tests indicate the powder is unlikely to be lethal. Two of the missives have a Texas return address while one has "al-Qaeda" written on it.

Several letters containing deadly anthrax spores were mailed to news media organizations, including CBS News and the New York Post, and two Democratic U.S. senators in late 2001. The letter sent to then-Majority leader Tom Daschle was opened by an aide, causing him to be infected and the postal service to be shut down.

The crime killed five people and infected 17 others. It was solved years later in 2008, when federal authorities said Bruce Ivins, a scientist at the government's biodefense institute in Maryland who committed suicide as the investigation focused on him, had sent the anthrax-laced letters.