The U.S.
consulate in Berlin was evacuated as a precaution Thursday after an employee
reported a strange smell from an envelope, but police said no dangerous
materials were found in a sweep of the building.
The smell came
from an envelope containing supporting materials for a visa application that was
given to consular employees by the applicant in person, U.S. Embassy spokeswoman
Ruth Bennett said.
Police experts
checked the building to see if any chemical substances or poisonous gases had
been released but nothing was found, police spokesman Michael Merkle told n-tv
television.
Bennett said she
had no immediate information on the status of the person who brought the
envelope in, and Merkle would not comment, citing the ongoing investigation.
The U.S. Embassy
is located downtown but the consulate is in the southwestern Zehlendorf suburb.
Huffington Post
An employee at
the visa section had reported breathing difficulties and a metallic taste in her
mouth after opening a passport handed to her by a male visitor, believed to be
Albanian, police said. Chicago Tribune The alarm came
amid attacks on U.S. embassy and consulate buildings across the Middle East.
Chicago Tribune Egyptian
protesters scaled the walls of the U.S. embassy in Cairo on Tuesday and pulled
down the American flag during a protest over what they said was a film produced
in the United States that insulted the Prophet Mohammad, witnesses said.
Huffington Post This is while
the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three American members of his staff were killed
in an attack on the U.S. consulate in the eastern city of Benghazi by protesters
angry over a film that ridiculed Islam's Prophet Mohammad, Libyan officials
said Wednesday. LA Times Angry
demonstrators [in Cairo] continued their protest at the U.S. mission for the
second consecutive day against a controversial film mocking Islam and its
Prophet, vowing escalation on Friday unless the U.S. government offered a formal
apology. Ahram Online Elsewhere,
hundreds of Yemeni demonstrators stormed the U.S. embassy in Sanaa, the Capital
of Yemen on Thursday in protest at a film [which was] blasphemous to Islam.
Reuters U.S. embassies
in at least seven countries in the Middle East, Africa and the Caucasus are
warning of possible anti-American protests following the attack on the consulate
in Benghazi, Libya that killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other
Americans. Huffington Post
ISH/SM
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