A suspicious white powder contained in a letter to the U.S. consulate in Hamburg was found to be sugar, police said on Wednesday, the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the United States.
In Washington, a U.S. State Department official said U.S. embassies or consulates in Germany, Denmark, Italy and Luxembourg had received letters containing white powder on Wednesday, sparking fears of an anthrax attack.
"Unidentified white powder was received in local mail deliveries," a U.S. official told journalists.
But a spokesman for the Munich police said powder sent to the U.S. consulate in the city was also harmless.
"We can rule out that it's dangerous. This looks like a bad joke," he said.
The United States and its European allies have been on high alert during the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the United States, fearing that militants might exploit the commemoration to mount new attacks on Western targets.
The U.S. embassy in Rome said it too had received a suspicious letter containing a grainy substance. It said the letter had an international return address.
"Late this morning mail employees opened up a pouch of international mail. One of the letters was suspicious with an international return address and appeared to have some sort of granulous substance when they shook it," an embassy spokesman said.
Danish police said the U.S. embassy in Copenhagen received a letter containing suspicious powder on Wednesday.
"We are currently investigating a mailing received at the U.S. embassy containing suspicious powder," a Danish police spokesman told journalists.
"It did not look like a bad joke to us," said Niels Strandberg Pedersen, director of the Danish Serum Institute.
Samples had been sent by plane to Sweden because it had the only class four security laboratory in Scandinavia, where there was sufficient safety to protect staff.
The U.S. embassy in Luxembourg received a letter containing a benign white powder early on Wednesday.
"It appears to be flour or some white powder," said Kent Trogdon, special agent for diplomatic security services, referring to initial results from tests by local authorities.
In Hamburg, the police spokesman said the letter to the U.S. consulate had been sent from within Germany, and apart from the powder, it contained a note with what he said was Arabic writing.
Five people died and 13 were taken ill after letters tainted with anthrax in powder form were sent to U.S. government officials and media outlets across the United States in the weeks after the attacks on September 11, 2001.