Radioactive Parcel Bound for US Seized in Ukraine

Wednesday, September 24, 2003

(12:06:57 GMT)

Reuters

KIEV
A radioactive package addressed to the United States has been seized at Ukraine's main airport in the capital Kiev, Ukrainian officials said on Wednesday.

The regional emergencies ministry said the package, discovered on Tuesday, was emitting radiation at a rate thousands of times higher than the norm in Kiev of 0.05 milliroentgens an hour.

"This material is being investigated," said Mykola Karabet, duty officer for the emergencies ministry in the Borispyl region of Kiev. "We do not know what it is.

"It was a parcel in some luggage to be sent by air transport... There is no threat to human health or life."

The United States has been on alert for suspect packages since Washington was all but shut down by letters containing anthrax powder in 2001.

In Ukraine, metal scrap and other objects from the Chernobyl region are often stopped at the borders of the former Soviet state for higher than normal radiation levels.

Large swathes of the country were left with high levels of radioactivity after Chernobyl's reactor number four exploded in 1986, in the world's worst civil nuclear disaster.

Health officials have blamed that accident for thousands of deaths from radiation-linked illnesses and an increase in thyroid cancer.
(Source: Reuters AlertNet)
2003 © Reuters, Ltd.

Dan