TEL AVIV, Oct 17: The anthrax scare gripping the United States over the last fortnight has started making its presence felt in other countries.

On Wednesday Israel, Japan, Sweden, South Africa were the latest to have been overtaken by the jitters of germ warfare.

The Israeli parliament sounded an alert for a possible anthrax attack on Wednesday, while the leader of the left-wing opposition party Meretz, Yossi Sarid, and an aide were rushed to hospital after opening suspect letters, a spokeswoman said.

The alerts were sparked by envelopes containing white powder, the trademark of a spate of anthrax attacks in the United States, said Knesset spokeswoman Nili Shrem.

In Japan, letters with suspicious powder were sent to a US consulate, the Japanese prime minister’s office, the foreign ministry, and three newspapers.

Officials at Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s office confirmed that a letter with the powder had been delivered, but that police investigations found the suspicious substance to be a kind of starch.

The offices of the Swedish government received a letter containing an unidentified white powder which was immediately handed over to police, the government said in a statement.

“Employees who came in contact with the letter have either undergone or will undergo medical examinations,” the statement said, adding that the government offices were also being examined by police.

In South Africa, a school near Cape Town was evacuated after the headmaster received a suspicious envelope with white powder in the third anthrax scare around the city in less than 24 hours.

A police official said the principal opened an envelope addressed to him in his office and a note saying “anthrax bacillus”, and the powdery substance fell out.

The alarm in Israel’s Knesset building was raised when an assistant to Naomi Hazan, a party colleague of Sarid, opened a letter addressed to Hazan to find it contained white powder.

“We immediately alerted the parliamentary security services, as well as specialists at the ministry of health, before sealing off the area,” she said.

Security officials in anti-contamination suits removed the suspect envelope for laboratory testing, while the exposed assistant was admitted to the Hadassah hospital in occupied Al Quds.

Sarid was also taken to hospital in Tel Aviv after opening an envelope he received to discover the same white powder.

An alert at a newspaper’s offices in Jerusalem Tuesday turned out to be a hoax by an office joker, but in the US Senate Tuesday 29 staff were exposed to anthrax which was found in the building’s ventilation sustem.

japan: The foreign ministry issued a statement saying that a letter addressed to Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka and appearing to contain powder had been delivered, but that the ministry sent it directly to police without opening it.

A letter containing powder that was delivered to the U.S. consulate in Osaka, western Japan on Wednesday morning was being investigated by police.

During the morning, several people wearing protective suits were seen entering the consulate building.

NEWSPAPERS TARGETED: Suspicious letters were also received on Wednesday at three of Japan’s major national dailies — the Mainichi Shimbun, the Asahi Shimbun and the Yomiuri Shimbun.