ANTHRAX SUSPECTED IN EGYPTIAN SAILOR’S DEATH

An Egyptian sailor has died in north­ern Brazil — and anthrax is sus­pected in his death.
Details are sketchy in this case. But accord­ing to wire reports, the man, Ibrahim Saved Soliman Ibrahim, had trav­eled from Cairo to the Amazon state of Para about two and a half weeks ago. There he was to meet a ship, des­tined for a smelter on the Saguenay River in Quebec. But before he could get on board, Ibrahim died in his hotel room, after vom­it­ing, inter­nal bleed­ing and mul­ti­ple organ fail­ure.
A spokesman for Brazilian police said that anthrax was respon­si­ble for the death. Ibrahim was given a suit­case in Cairo by an uniden­ti­fied per­son and was due to deliver it to some­body in Canada, accord­ing to the spokesman. But he fell ill after open­ing the case.
Canadian author­i­ties now have the ship in quar­an­tine, 1,000 meters off the Nova Scotian port of Halifax. But they’re not con­vinced that anthrax is to blame for the sailor’s death.
“I can assure you we’ve dis­cov­ered no threat to Canada, crim­i­nally or terrorism-​​wise,” a Canadian inspec­tor in Halifax told Canada Press. “Right now it’s just a story.“
Health Canada offi­cials are expect­ing defin­i­tive test results on sam­ples taken from the ship “early this week.“
For back­ground infor­ma­tion on anthrax, click here.
THERE’S MORE: Now Brazilian health offi­cials are say­ing that what­ever killed the sailor, “it is not anthrax.”

April 29th, 2003 | Chem-Bio | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.