Russia still grappling with anthrax past

Lazar Karseyev was diagnosed as having a "bad cold"

In April 1979, the city of Sverdlovsk in Russia, now called Yekaterinburg, fell victim to an anthrax outbreak that killed at least 68 people.

At the time the local Communist Party chief, one Boris Yeltsin, blamed the outbreak on a consignment of tainted meat.

All those who fell ill were people who, for one reason or another, had been outside at night or early in the morning

Viktor Romanenko
deputy chief of the regional epidemiological service

The details of the outbreak were covered up and the deaths simply listed as "infections" in the regional epidemiological services' annual report, with no mention of anthrax anywhere.

But in 1992 Mr Yeltsin, by now the Russian president, admitted in an interview that in fact the infection had been caused by an accident at a nearby germ warfare laboratory.

The laboratory in the city approximately 1360 km (850 miles) east of Moscow was known as Military Compound 19.

It was part of a network of germ factories producing hundreds of tonnes of anthrax as part of Russia's biological weapons programme.

Mystery illness

In 1972 Russia had signed up to the Biological Weapons Convention banning germ warfare, but Russian officials admitted later that they had been violating the treaty for 20 years.

In early April 1979 residents in the southern part of Sverdlovsk near the compound began to fall ill and die from a mysterious illness.

Many of their farm animals also began to die.

The city authorities offered no explanation but began swabbing the buildings with disinfectant and hosing down the streets.

"Nobody told us what was going on, we just saw people in masks washing our houses. There was no information," Yelena Klyuchagina, a local resident,said.

But as the death toll continued to rise - at least 68 people died in the course of two months - and outlying villages began to be affected too the authorities admitted that it was the work of anthrax.

Quarantine

Medics dressed in biohazard suits moved in and sealed the area off, the mud roads were suddenly paved and residents were given mass vaccinations and antibiotic treatments.

Even the dead were isolated - buried at the edge of the city's cemetery in coffins filled with chlorinated lime.

Nobody has ever officially told us that this was from biological weapons, nobody has ever apologised

Lidia Tretyakova
daughter of victim

For years, the official government explanation was that the outbreak had been caused by meat contaminated with the anthrax bacteria.

But many, including the US Government, never believed this explanation - the Carter administration at the time suspected that the outbreak was caused by the weapons facility in the city and made its suspicions public.

Despite Russia constantly denying that it was breaking the Biological Warfare Convention the debate over whether they were telling the truth continued to rage.

Then, in 1992, during an interview, Mr Yeltsin admitted that Compound 19 had been producing anthrax and that there had been a leak.

Scant details

It is believed that anthrax spores escaped from the laboratory in the early hours of 2 April - about two days before the first people started to get sick.

Nearly all of the victims lived or worked in the area near the facility and according to Viktor Romanenko, deputy chief of the regional epidemiological service, "all those who fell ill were people who, for one reason or another, had been outside at night or early in the morning".

Despite Mr Yelstin's admission that the laboratory was the source of the outbreak, the incident still remains shrouded in mystery with no other details yet released.

"Nobody has ever officially told us that this was from biological weapons, nobody has ever apologised," said Lidia Tretyakova, the daughter of Lazar Karseyev, who died in the outbreak.