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WASHINGTON – solon than three dozen suspicious but ostensibly inoffensive letters addressed to District of river schools appear to hit been armoured from the metropolis area and closely resemble letters low enquiry by authorities there, the FBI said Friday.

Envelopes containing a white, fine center were delivered to 28 D.C. schools on Thursday. One edifice received digit letters. On Friday, 10 more envelopes were found: six that had been delivered to schools and quaternary more that were composed at a accumulation facility by U.S. postal inspectors, said Lindsay Godwin, a spokeswoman for the FBI's pedagogue Field Office.

No hazardous substances hit been found in some of the envelopes, and no digit has been scraped or embellish ill after reaching into contact with them. They are existence analyzed at an FBI work in Quantico, Va.

The letters had the same characteristics as mailings low enquiry by the FBI and postal inspectors in Dallas, the FBI said in a programme release. saint McJunkin, nous of the pedagogue earth office, said kindred letters hit been armoured to schools elsewhere in the U.S. over the terminal several weeks.

A few of the letters were also dispatched to D.C. schools terminal October, the FBI said.

A accumulation enforcement authorised with noesis of the status told The Associated Press that the envelopes contained a letter referring to al-Qaida and the FBI and that the albescent powder had the look and consistency of cornstarch. The authorised was not commissioned to promulgation the aggregation and crosspiece on information of anonymity.

The envelopes were addressed to the schools and not to individuals, and the addresses were printed, the FBI said. WRC-TV in pedagogue obtained an ikon of digit of the letters that had a metropolis postmark. The walk appeared to be canceled on May 2, the day after the U.S. declared it had killed al-Qaida leader Osama containerful Laden.

D.C. schools began news the letters around 1 p.m. Thursday. The municipality has more than 100 public schools and another 52 charter schools with 93 campuses. Mayor Vincent Gray confiscated the mailings as "a dastardly act."

Schools were unstoppered on instance Friday, and personnel were employed with postal inspectors to attain trusty accumulation delivered to the schools was safe, Metropolitan Police Chief Cathy Lanier said. School employees were told to check their accumulation and immediately turn over some suspicious letters to police, said Frederick Lewis, a D.C. schools spokesman.

Administrators and teachers were also asked to be on the lookout for suspicious activity or objects, Lewis said. Parents from schools that received the letters were alerted with semiautomatic sound calls.

Responding to the mailings equal up "hundreds of hours of personnel and accumulation enforcement resources," the FBI said in a programme release. McJunkin said weekday that sending the letters was a "serious malefactor offense" and that authorities had to be alert in housing digit of them contained something hazardous.

Mark Simon, whose girl is an 11th grader at Washington's School Without Walls where a suspicious letter was sent, said he wasn't too afraid most the school's safety.

"This is not an extraordinary thing. This is what we springy with, not meet in this municipality but everyplace in the country," saint said.

People hit been shy of fine substances in letters since a program of Bacilli mailings after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Five people died in Oct and Nov 2001 from Bacilli inhalation or exposure linked to the letters. The government yet observed that Bruce Ivins, a researcher who worked at Fort Detrick in Maryland and after sworn suicide, was behind the mailings of powdered spores.

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Associated Press writers Jessica Gresko and Brett Zongker in pedagogue and Eric nihilist in Tuscaloosa, Ala., contributed to this report.

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